in the air; one breathes it in like the influenza."

Glennard sat motionless, watching his wife.

"Perhaps it hasn't reached the suburbs yet," she said, with her
unruffled smile.

"Oh, DO let me come to you, then!" Mrs. Touchett cried; "anything
for a change of air! I'm positively sick of the book and I can't
put it down. Can't you sail us beyond its reach, Mr. Flamel?"

Flamel shook his head. "Not even with this breeze. Literature
travels faster than steam nowadays. And the worst of it is that
we can't any of us give up reading; it's as insidious as a vice
and as tiresome as a virtue."

"I believe it IS a vice, almost, to read such a book as the
'Letters,'" said Mrs. Touchett. "It's the woman's soul,
absolutely torn up by the roots--her whole self laid bare; and to
a man who evidently didn't care; who couldn't have cared. I don't
mean to read another line; it's too much like listening at a
keyhole."

"But if she wanted it published?"

"Wanted it? How do we know she did?"

"Why, I heard she'd left the letters to the man--whoever he is--
with directions that they should be published after his death--"