She looked at Elfrida with inquiry, in spite of herself, when she gave the message, but Elfrida received it with a nod and a smile of perfect indifference.

"It is because she does not care--does not care _an iota_," Janet told herself; and all that day it seemed to her that Elfrida's personality was inexhaustibly delightful.
Afterward, however, one or two letters found their way into the sandal-wood box, bearing the Norwegian postmark.
They came seldomer than Elfrida expected.

"_Enfin!_" she said when the first arrived, and she felt her pulse beat a little faster as she opened it.

She read it eagerly, with serious lips, thinking how fine he was, and with what exquisite force he brought himself to her as he wrote.

"I must be a very exceptional person," she said in her reverie afterward, "to have such things written to me.