worry about your _sleeplessness_. Of course you _don't_
sleep! That's the trouble with rheumatism. It's such an old
Night-Nagger. Now do you know what I'm going to do to you?
I'm going to evolve myself into a sort of a Rheumatic Nights
Entertainment--for the sole and explicit purpose of trying
to while away some of your long, dark hours. Because if
you've simply _got_ to stay awake all night long and
think--you might just as well be thinking about ME, Carl
Stanton. What? Do you dare smile and suggest for a moment
that just because of the Absence between us I cannot make
myself vivid to you? Ho! Silly boy! Don't you know that the
plainest sort of black ink throbs more than some blood--and
the touch of the softest hand is a harsh caress compared to
the touch of a reasonably shrewd pen? Here--now, I say--this
very moment: Lift this letter of mine to your face, and
swear--if you're honestly able to--that you can't smell the
rose in my hair! A cinnamon rose, would you say--a yellow,
flat-faced cinnamon rose? Not quite so lusciously fragrant
as those in your grandmother's July garden? A trifle paler?
Perceptibly cooler? Something forced into blossom, perhaps,
behind brittle glass, under barren winter moonshine? And
yet--A-h-h! Hear me laugh! You didn't really mean to let
yourself lift the page and smell it, did you? But what did I
tell you?

"I mustn't waste too much time, though, on this nonsense.
What I really wanted to say to you was: Here are four--not
'sleeping potions', but waking potions--just four silly
little bits of news for you to think about at one o'clock,
and two, and three--and four, if you happen to be so