Kate.”

In September she sent Honora a letter of congratulation.

“So it’s twins!  Girls!  Were you transported or amused?  Patience and Patricia—­very pretty.  You’ll stay at home with the treasures, won’t you?  You see, there’s something about you I can’t quite understand, if you’ll forgive me for saying it.  You were an exuberant girl, but after marriage you grew austere—­put your lips together in a line that discouraged kissing.  So I’m not sure of you even now that the babies have come.  Some day you’ll have to explain yourself to me.

“I’m one who needs explanations all along the road.  Why?  Why?  Why?  That is what my soul keeps demanding.  Why couldn’t I go back to Chicago with Ray McCrea?  He was down here the other day, but I wouldn’t let him say the things he obviously had come to say, and now he’s on his way abroad and very likely we shall not meet again.  I feel so numb since mummy died that I can’t care about Ray.  I keep crying ‘Why?’ about Death among other things.  And about that horrid gulf between father and me.  If we try to get across we only fall in.  He has me here ready to his need.  He neither knows nor cares what my thoughts are.  So long as I answer the telephone faithfully, sterilize the drinking-water, and see that he gets his favorite dishes, he is content.  I have no liberty to leave the house and my restlessness is torture.  The neighbors no longer flutter in as they used when mummy was here.  They have given me over to my year of mourning—­which means vacuity.

“Partly for lack of something better to do I have cleaned the old house from attic to cellar, and have been glad to creep to bed lame and sore from work, because then I could sleep.  Father won’t let me read at night—­watches for signs of the light under my door and calls out to me if it shows.  It is golden weather without, dear friend, and within is order and system.  But what good?  I am stagnating, perishing.  I can see no release—­cannot even imagine in what form I would like it to come.  In your great happiness remember my sorrow.  And with your wonderful sweetness forgive my bitter egotism.  But truly, Honora, I die daily.”

The first letter Honora Fulham wrote after she was able to sit at her desk was to Kate.  No answer came.  In November Mrs. Fulham telephoned to Lena Vroom to ask if she had heard, but Lena had received no word.

“Go down to Silvertree, Lena, there’s a dear,” begged her old schoolmate.  But Lena was working for her doctor’s degree and could not spare the time.  The holidays came on, and Mrs. Fulham tried to imagine her friend as being at last broken to her galling harness.  Surely there must be compensations for any father and daughter who can dwell together.  Her own Christmas was a very happy one, and she was annoyed with herself that her thoughts so continually turned to Kate.  She had an uneasy sense of apprehension in spite of all her verbal assurances to Lena that Kate could master any situation.