too back to her.

And she would say, "Thank you," and look slowly all round the room, as
she always did, wanting to take it away with her without one detail
missing, for it was to this room that her soul retreated in its moments
of unbearable loneliness.

With difficulty, she would make her way to the door and rather
hurriedly, because she knew it was a weakness--she who was so deliberate
and so strong--she would say, "Write to me," and then she would open and
shut the door herself because she liked to take away the picture of him
standing in the middle of his sanctuary--her sanctuary....

* * * * *

He opened his eyes. The room was so full of her that he took a deep
breath, breathing the certainty of her into his soul. And he seemed to
hear the words, "Write to me." He smiled very tenderly. He loved her to
have this one little wish--she was so far above and beyond concrete
manifestations--she who had such a deep contempt for imprisoning forms.
And he remembered her once looking at a cheque and saying, "The figures,
after all, are a limitation." And suddenly in front of him he saw the
blank sheet of paper. "She shall have the most wonderful love-letter
ever written by man to woman," he said to himself and at the very bottom
of the page, he put one initial. Then very tenderly he folded it up and
addressed it, remembering that it was thus that his first novel had been
dedicated--"To Mrs. ----." "The difference is," he thought, "that this is
a masterpiece."