No, she couldn’t do that. She didn’t know where Jeff was going. And there was Camilla. She didn’t want Camilla to know that she was interested. That was the trouble when your favorite cousin got married—there was always his wife, no matter how nice she was.

And she didn’t want Jeff to know that she was interested, either. Any question would have to be oh, so casual, and that couldn’t be accomplished as things were now. No telling when she would see Jeff alone again.

And besides, of course, she must wait to see if John Saxon ever came again or wrote. Oh, strange, sweet, perilous situation!

Then she thought of his voice whispering “my darling!” and fell asleep with her cheek against his.

Tomorrow she would have to see about sending back that ring, but tonight was hers and John Saxon’s.

Chapter 4

John Saxon made his way to the club car and sat down at the desk to write his letter. It seemed the most momentous thing of his life. In his hand he still clutched the tiny envelope Mary Elizabeth had given him at parting. He hadn’t as yet looked at it. But he glared around on the other inhabitants of the car sternly. They were not his kind. Three men at a table were playing cards and drinking, had been drinking for some time, if one might judge from their loud, excited voices. A highly illuminated girl was smoking in the far corner and watching the men sleepily. An old man with cigar ashes sprinkled over his ample vest front was audibly sleeping in the chair next to the desk, his rank cigar smoldering in his limp hand.

Saxon turned away in disgust. It seemed a desecration to write to her in such surroundings. Such thoughts as he wished to write to her were not fitting here.

He arose and went back to his section. It would not be comfortable to write there, but at least he would not be annoyed by others talking. He had not spent a large part of his life roughing it for nothing. He could make the best of circumstances. So he disposed of his baggage as best he could, got out his writing materials, folded his length up to as comfortable a position as he could beside the tiny light of his berth, and started to pour out his heart to the girl he had just left. He had promised her a letter at once, and she would have it.

“My dear—” he began. He did not want any names interfering in this first letter. He wanted to tell her all that was in his heart before his thoughts would be entangled with the things of this world, including even a name. As he remembered it, she didn’t have a very pretty name, but what was in a name anyway? So, “My dear—” he wrote and lingered over the writing of it pleasantly.

I want to tell you what you seemed like to me when I first saw you, to tell you all the things I wanted to say going down that aisle and couldn’t because there wasn’t time, to let you know what you seemed to me all the blessed evening while we were together. They are things of course that I should have said on the way to the station when I was tongue-tied with the thought of your nearness and my privilege. Yet the time was not wasted, for I learned that just to be quietly near you was enough to bring great joy and peace and preciousness.

And now, I find there are no words that will express the depth of my thoughts about you—as if I were a painter, and getting out my pigments, I find none of sufficient clearness and depth of color to paint you as you are. I should have to mix the colors from my heart. That’s how I feel about you.