Henceforth Peter walked daily to the post-office in the market-town. And never perhaps has author so eagerly awaited the sight of a letter from his publishers.  
For ten days, however, the journeys made by him were fruitless, and he began to cast about despairingly in his mind for the memory of anything in his own letter that could have offended. But he found nothing. His writing, during these days, did not progress. He was too restless, too anxious, to work quietly. Sometimes he sat at his cottage door and piped. Occasionally a small crowd of children would gather outside the hedge, drawn by the magic of the music. The ceasing of the pipe, or any movement on his part, however, was the signal for them to scatter like a flock of frightened sparrows, and he would find the lane deserted.
 
 
At last, one evening, his journey to the market-town proved fruitful. A letter awaited him there, also a box bearing the name of a London tailor.
 
Peter returned across the fields at a fine pace, the letter in his breast pocket, the box under his arm. Arriving at his cottage, he unknotted the string that tied it.
 
Some twenty minutes later, Peter, in well-cut evening clothes and with a gleaming expanse of white shirt-front, broke the seal of the letter.
 
You perceive he was a host, receiving in spirit the woman who had deigned to consider him worthy of notice. And now he held the letter in his hand and saw once more the delicate, firm writing.
 
“London,
 
“May 27th.
 
“First I must thank you that you have not misunderstood me. And now that the understanding between us is complete, I can write more freely, more fully.
 
“So you are a recluse. Perhaps you are to be envied. I have been, and am, in the midst of [Pg 81]that mumming-show society, where we all wear gaily-coloured masks and jest with those around us. We speak little as we feel, but largely as we are expected to speak. Is it part of your compensation that you need not speak at all? For me, I am somewhat weary of the show. It is very gaudy, and the music, I think, too loud. You may ask why I attend it, and to that I have no answer, except that custom demands it of me as a right. How many people, I wonder, act not according to their own individuality, but rather as usage and those around them expect them to act?
 
“Is it possible, I wonder, to free oneself from tradition, that closely fitting garment placed upon us by our ancestors at birth, which becomes, to the majority, as much part and parcel of ourselves as our skin? Clothed in it, I attend dances, dinners, bridge parties, and theatres, from which I am at the moment recoiling with a kind of mental nausea. Should I strip myself of the garment, shall I not feel cold and shivery—in short, to use a common phrase, feel ‘out of things’? And once the garment is definitely discarded it may not be so easily donned again; at all events, it might not [Pg 82]fit so well. You, a writer, who in your solitude think many thoughts, give me your opinion.
 
“Mercifully, custom has at least decreed that I should spend some months in the country. In a few days’ time I go down to it. There my individuality resumes what I believe to be its rightful sway. I have a garden. It is, as the poet sings, a thing of beauty, and is to me a joy for ever.
 
“A summer evening in a flower-scented garden! Can you—you writer of poetic prose—conceive anything more full of charm and delight? I have a bed of night-stocks—poor, dilapidated, withered things in the daytime, and the despair of my gardener. But in the evening on the terrace the odour is entrancing—divine. My thoughts are ‘carried on the wings of perfume into high places.’ You see, I can quote from your book and from memory.
 
“No; the cry beneath its strength and sunshine was faint, barely discernible. I confess that at the first reading, which I took at a draught, I did not observe it. It was when I returned, as I did, to sip the wine of its poetic fancy that I detected the slightly bitter taste. [Pg 83]Yet bitter is not a fair word to use. Bittersweet would be better, though that barely fits the flavour. The exact word—if one exists—has escaped me.
 
“You quote from Emerson, and also speak of compensation. Of course, you know this:
 
“‘We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels go. We do not see that they go out only that archangels may come in.... The compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time.... It permits or constrains the formation of new acquaintances and the reception of new influences, that prove of the first importance to the next years; and the man or woman who would have remained a sunny garden-flower, with no room for its roots a............