and her full name signed at the end.  The hot blood turned his white forehead red as Claudius finished reading.  He could not believe his eyes, and the room swam for a moment; for he was very much in love, this big Swede.  Then he grew pale again and quite calm, and read the note over.  Novels indeed!  What did he know about novels?  He would ask her plainly if she wanted his company on the yacht or no.  He would say, “Shall I come? or shall I stay behind?” Claudius had much to learn from Mr. Barker before he was competent to deal with women.  But then Claudius would have scorned the very expression “to deal” with them; theirs to command, his to obey—­there was to be no question of dealing.  Only in his simple heart he would like to know in so many words what the commands were; and that is sometimes a little hard, for women like to be half understood before they speak, and the grosser intellect of man seldom more than half understands them after they have spoken.

A note requires an answer, and Claudius made the usual number of failures.  When one has a great deal more to say than one has any right to say, and when at the same time one is expected to say particularly little, it is very hard to write a good note.  All sorts of ideas creep in and express themselves automatically.  A misplaced plural for a singular, a superlative adjective where the vaguer comparative belongs; the vast and immeasurable waste of weary years that may lie between “dear” and “dearest,” the gulf placed between “sincerely yours, John Smith,” and “yours, J.S.,” and “your J.,” until the blessed state is reached wherein the signature is omitted altogether, and every word bears the sign-manual of the one woman or one man who really exists for you.  What a registering thermometer of intimacy exists in notes, from the icy zero of first acquaintance to the raging throb of boiling blood-heat!  So Claudius, after many trials, arrived at the requisite pitch of absolute severity, and began his note, “My dear Countess Margaret,” and signed it, “very obediently yours,” which said just what was literally true; and he stated that he would immediately proceed to carry out the Countess’s commands, and make a list in which nothing should be wanting that could contribute to her amusement.

When he went to see her on the following day he was a little surprised at her manner, which inclined more to the severe coldness of that memorable day of difficulties than to the unbending he had expected from her note.  Of course he had no reason to be disappointed, and he showed his inexperience.  She was compensating her conscience for the concession she had made in intimating that he might go.  It was indeed a concession, but to what superior power she had yielded it behoves not inquisitive man to ask.  Perhaps she thought Claudius would enjoy the trip very much, and said to herself she had no right to make him give it up.

They read together for some time, and at last Claudius asked her, in connection with a point which arose, whether she would like to read a German book that he thought good.