It's only love that's any
good. At home I wouldn't love Mellersh unless he loved me back,
exactly as much, absolute fairness. Did you ever. And as he didn't,
neither did I, and the aridity of that house! The aridity . . ."
Rose said nothing. She was bewildered by Lotty. One odd effect
of San Salvatore on her rapidly developing friend was her sudden free
use of robust words. She had not used them in Hampstead. Beast and
dog were more robust than Hampstead cared about. In words, too, Lotty
had come unchained.
But how she wished, oh how Rose wished, that she too could write
to her husband and say "Come." The Wilkins menage, however pompous
Mellersh might be, and he had seemed to Rose pompous, was on a
healthier, more natural footing than hers. Lotty could write to
Mellersh and would get an answer. She couldn't write to Frederick, for
only too well did she know he wouldn't answer. At least, he might
answer--a hurried scribble, showing how much bored he was at doing it,
with perfunctory thanks for her letter. But that would be worse than
no answer at all; for his handwriting, her name on an envelope
addressed by him, stabbed her heart. Too acutely did it bring back the
letters of their beginnings together, the letters from him so desolate
with separation, so aching with love and longing.
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