So that sometimes she wrote three or four times in a week and sometimes not at all for a fortnight, sometimes covered pages and sometimes sent three lines and a row of asterisks.

There was a fancifulness in the hour as well, that usually made itself felt all through the letter--it was rainy twilight in her garret, or a gray wideness was creeping up behind St Paul's, which meant that it was morning.

To what she herself was actually doing, or to any material fact about her, they made the very slightest reference.

Janet, in Scotland, perceived half of this, and felt aggrieved on the score of the other half.

She wished, more often than she said she did, that Elfrida were a little more human, that she had a more appreciative understanding of the warm value of common every-day matters between people who were interested in one another.