weigh every phrase, and to think out their bon mots, epigrams, and
smart things for weeks beforehand, so that the letter might appear
full of impromptu wit. I should like, for instance, just for once, to
rob the outward or the homeward mail, in order to read all the
delightful letters which go every week backward and forward between
the folk in India and the folk at home.

"I shall lose my letters," Iris recollected, and her heart sunk. Not
only did her correspondent begin to draw these imaginary portraits of
her, but he proceeded to urge upon her to come out of her concealment,
and to grant him an interview. This she might have refused, in her
desire to continue a correspondence which brightened her monotonous
life. But there came another thing, and this decided her. He began to
give, and to ask, opinions concerning love, marriage, and such
topics--and then she perceived it could not possibly be discussed with
him, even in domino and male disguise. "As for love," her pupil wrote,
"I suppose it is a real and not a fancied necessity of life. A man, I
mean, may go on a long time without it, but there will come a time--do
not you think so?--when he is bound to feel the incompleteness of life
without a woman to love. We ought to train our boys and girls from the
very beginning to regard love and marriage as the only things really
worth having, because without them there is no happiness. Give me your
own experience. I am sure you must have been in love at some time or
other in your life."

Anybody will understand that Iris could not possibly give her own
experience in love-matters, nor could she plunge into speculative
philosophy of this kind with her pupil. Obviously the thing must come
to an end. Therefore she wrote a letter to him, telling him that
"I.A." would meet him, if he pleased, that very evening at the hour of