in intimate murmurs. She felt almost indignant with Joe. He couldn't keep her for himself, yet he kept her from everyone else. If this is being engaged, I don't like it, she thought. But in a minute Ralph was making her laugh by mimicking Mrs. Prather's severe reprimands to poor little Santarelli, who was almost weeping. She lay back among silk cushions, laughing, too comfortable to lift the lighted cigarette between her fingers, warmly shut within the moment.
But going home in Ralph's gondola, poled through liquid silver by his gondoliers with their apple-green sashes and apple-green ribbons fluttering from the sailor hats little girls used to wear in the 'eighties, she was overwhelmed by a rush of feeling for Joe. She thought of another sentence from his letter:
"I love you so that it must make atonement to you for everything."
When Mrs. Thorne was asleep Evelyn went into the bathroom with pad and pencil and wrote to him.
"Joe, I'm terrified! This separation terrifies me! I don't want a beautiful dream, or to be made finer and stronger through patient waiting, or anything like that; I want to be yours now. I'm sick with fright at time and distance. Oh, Joe, my darling, take me and keep me, before it's too late."
Her letter was carried across the sea to the Westlake post office. In Mr. James Perkins' mail bag it went to 29 Chestnut Street, where Kate was dusting the hall.
