“Louise adores her brother, and she thinks he would be a great artist if he would take himself seriously.  But neither of them seems to take anything seriously.  They always seem to be laughing at the world in a quiet way.  Louise is not pretty, but she gives an effect of beauty——­ She wears a big gray cape and a black velvet tam, and I am not sure that the color in her cheeks is real.  She is different from other people, but it doesn’t seem to be a pose.  It is just because she has lived in so many places and has seen so many people and has thought for herself.  I have always let other people think for me, haven’t I, Randy?

     “And now that I have done with the Copes, I am going to talk about
     the things that you said to me in your letter, and which are really
     the important things.

“I hated to think that you dropped Mr. Dalton in the fountain.  I hated to think that you wanted to burn him at the stake—­there was something—­cruel—­and—­dreadful in it all.  I have kept thinking of that struggle between you—­in the dark——­ I have hated to think that a few years ago if you had felt as you do about him—­that you might have—­killed him.  But perhaps men are like that.  They care more for justice than for—­mercy.

“I am trying to take your advice and tell myself the truth about Mr. Dalton.  That he isn’t worth a thought of mine.  Yet I think of him a great deal.  I am being very frank with you, Randy, because we have always talked things out.  I think of him, and wonder which is the real man—­the one I thought he was—­and I thought him very fine and splendid.  Or is he just trifling and commonplace?  Perhaps he is just between, not as wonderful as I thought him, nor as contemptible as I seem forced to believe.

“Yet I gave him something that it is hard to take back.  I gave a great deal.  You see I had always been shut up in a glass case like the bob-whites and the sandpipers in the Bird Room, and I knew nothing of the world.  And the first time I tried my wings, I thought I was flying towards the sun, and it was just a blaze that—­burned me.

“Of course you are right when you say that you won’t marry me unless I love you.  I had a queer feeling at first about it—­as if you were very far away and I couldn’t reach you.  But I know that you are right, and that you are thinking of the thing that is best for me.  But I know I shall always have you as a friend.  I don’t think that I shall ever love anybody.  And after this we won’t talk about it.  There are so many other things that we have to say to each other that don’t hurt——­”

Becky could not, of course, know the effect of her letter on Randy.  The night after its receipt, he roamed the woods.  She had thought him cruel—­and dreadful.  Well, let her think it.  He was glad that he had dropped George in the fountain.  He should always be glad.  But women were not like that—­they were tender—­and hated—­hardness.  Perhaps that was because they were—­mothers——­