He Is Our Mr. Wrenn

DEAR ISTRA,--I am back in New York feeling very well & hope this finds you the same. I have been wanting to write to you for quite a while now but there has not been much news of any kind & so I have not written to you. But now I am back working for the Souvenir Company. I hope you are having a good time in Paris it must be a very pretty city & I have often wished to be there perhaps some day I shall go. I [several erasures here] have been reading quite a few books since I got back & think now I shall get on better with my reading. You told me so many things about books & so on & I do appreciate it. In closing, I am yours very sincerely, WILLIAM WRENN.

There was nothing else he could say. But there were a terrifying number of things he could think as he crouched by the window overlooking West Sixteenth Street, whose dull hue had not changed during the centuries while he had been tramping England. Her smile he remembered--and he cried, "Oh, I want to see her so much." Her gallant dash through the rain--and again the cry.

At last he cursed himself, "Why don't you do something that 'd count for her, and not sit around yammering for her like a fool?"

He worked on his plan to "bring the South into line"--the Souvenir Company's line. Again and again he sprang up from the writing-table in his hot room when the presence of Istra came and stood compellingly by his chair. But he worked.