Gradually they had established the friendship Emily had thought possible.  Once or twice Dr. Warren took tea with her.  Her unabashed and accustomed readiness of hospitality was as incompatible with her circumstances as all the rest.  She had the ease of a woman who had amiably poured out tea for afternoon callers all her life.  Women who were uncertain of themselves were not amiably at ease with small social amenities.  Her ingenuous talk and her fervent italics were an absolute delight to the man who was studying her.  He, too, had noticed the carriage of her head Jane Cupp had deplored.

“I should say she was well born,” he commented to his wife.  “She holds herself as no common woman could.”

“Ah!  I haven’t a doubt that she is well born, poor soul.”

“No, not ‘poor soul.’  No woman who is as happy as she is needs pity.  Since she has had time to rest, she looks radiant.”

In course of time, however, she was less radiant.  Most people know something of waiting for answers to letters written to foreign lands.  It seems impossible to calculate correctly as to what length of time must elapse before the reply to the letter one sent by the last mail can reach one.  He who waits is always premature in the calculation he makes.  The mail should be due at a certain date, one is so sure.  The letter could be written on such a day and posted at once.  But the date calculated for arrives, passes,—­the answer has not come.  Who does not remember?

Emily Walderhurst had passed through the experience and knew it well.  But previously the letters she had sent had been of less vital importance.  When the replies to them had lingered on their way she had, it is true, watched eagerly ’, for the postman, and had lived restlessly between the arrivals of the mails, but she had taught herself resignation to the inevitable.  Now life had altered its aspect and its significance.  She had tried, with the aid of an untried imagination, to paint to herself the moments in which her husband would read the letter which told him what she had told.  She had wondered if he would start, if he would look amazed, if his grey-brown eyes would light with pleasure!  Might he not want to see her?  Might he not perhaps write at once?  She never could advance farther in her imagined reading of this reply than the first lines: 

“MY DEAR EMILY,—­The unexpected good news your letter contains has given me the greatest satisfaction.  You do not perhaps know how strong my desire has been—­”

She used to sit and flush with happiness when she reached this point.  She so wished that she was capable of depicting to herself what the rest would be.