Stella? When will the world learn to be natural and see the truth?
Love of the soul is the divine part of the business, but it cannot
exist without love of the body. As well ask a man to live upon
bread without water."

Then he moved to his writing table and composed rapidly a letter
to his beloved in which he recounted to her the result of the
interview and the threats of her late fiance, and the humor in
which he had quitted the room, and from that she might judge of
what she must reasonably expect. He advised her, as he was unaware
of how far the English authority of a guardian might go, to feign
some fatigue and keep her room next day and on no account whatever
to be persuaded to leave Rome or the hotel. He told her that in
the morning he would endeavor to see her uncle and aunt, but if
they refused this interview, he would write and ask formally for
her hand, and if his request were treated with scorn, then she
must be prepared to slip away with him to the Excelsior Hotel and
be consigned to the care of the Princess Urazov, his sister, who
would have arrived from Paris. The business part of the epistle
over, he allowed himself half a page of love sentences--which
caused Miss Rawson exquisite delight when she read them some
moments later.

She had not gone to bed directly, she was too excited and full of
new emotions to be thinking of sleep, and when she heard Ivan's
gentle tap at her door she crept to it and whispered without
opening it:

"Who is there?"