presently our correspondence fell away. the gaps between our letters lengthened out. we never wrote regularly because for that there must be a free exchange upon daily happenings, and neither of us cared to dwell too closely on our immediate lives. we had a regard for one another that left our backgrounds vague and shadowy. she had made her appeal across the sundering silences to me and i had answered, and we had poured out certain things from our minds. we could not go on discussing. i was a very busy man now, and she did not write except on my replies.
for a gap of nearly four months neither of us had anything to say in a letter at all. i think that in time our correspondence might have altogether died away. then she wrote again in a more familiar strain to tell me of certain definite changes of relationship and outlook. she said that the estrangement between herself and justin had increased during the past year; that they were going to live practically apart; she for the most part in the surrey house where her two children lived with their governesses and maids. but also she meant to snatch weeks and seasons for travel. upon that they had been disputing for some time. "i know it is well with the children," she wrote; "why should i be in perpetual attendance? i do nothing for them except an occasional kiss, or half-an-hour's romping. why should one pretend? justin and i have wrangled over this question of going away, for weeks, but at last feminine persistence has won. i am going to travel in my own fashion and see the world. with periodic appearances at his side in london and scotland. we have agreed at least on one thing, and that is upon a companion; she is to be my secretary in title, my moral guarantor in fact, and her name which is her crowning glory is stella summersley satchel. she is blonde, erect, huffy-mannered and thoroughly up to both sides of her work. i partly envy her independence and rectitude—partly only. it's odd and quite inconsistent of me that i don't envy her altogether. in theory i insist that a woman should not have charm,—it is our undoing. but when i meet one without it——!
"i shall also trail a maid, but i guess that young woman will learn what it is to be left behind in half the cities of europe before i have done with her. i always lose my maids. they are so much more passive and forgettable than luggage—abroad that is. and justin usually in the old days used to remember about them. and his valet used to see after them,—a most attentive man. justin cannot, he says, have his wife abroad with merely a companion; people would talk; maid it must be as well. and so in a week or less i shall start, unusually tailor-made, for south germany and all that jolly country, companioned and maided. i shall tramp—on the feet god has given me—in stout boots. miss summersley satchel marches, i understand, like the british infantry but on a vegetarian 'basis,'—fancy calling your nourishment a 'basis'!—the maid and so forth by èilgut...."
