I beg to thank you, dear Miss Polly, for your gypsy fortune-telling letter. Did the old gypsy mention by chance a blond Russian Prince? It was most kind of you to think of me at all, so far away in hot Rome, and indeed your letter brought a cool, refreshing air to temper the _sirocco_ and hot sun here.
It has been a trying summer in Rome, and if it hadn't been for some happy excursions I have been able to make to Florence and Venice and into the country and to the circus, I fear I should have found it unbearable.
Pray forgive my thanking you for your long and very sensible letter and for becoming almost confidential, and believe me, with my very cordial regards to your aunt and brother, and my compliments, very sincerely yours. _Why do you let the Prince join you in Paris, I'd like to know?_
Not from you. Besides, letters are too short and you have been flirting. What's more, you are meeting the Prince in Paris. That is what I don't like.
What can you expect when I haven't seen you all these months?
Will you marry me? Uncertainty in our relations troubling me deeply. Where do I stand? Heaven or Hell?
I do call it Heaven, or I would if only you were here. As it is, the doors are locked, for you are my golden key to happiness, to Paradise itself. It seems ages since your last letter came. Don't play with me again, will you, dearest? Although your letters this summer have been so sweet, I know what a little Pagan you are. Sometimes I wonder if you have any conscience at all about me. If you have, I've not as yet discovered it, but--my heart is in your keeping. Mona Lisa has disappeared from my life.
Of course your Aunt is set on your marrying the Prince. That has been plain all along,--how did he behave in Paris?--but you, my darling, _who_ could have guessed whether or not you were ready to make up your mind to settle down? So I delayed asking you to marry me--in so many words. But now that we have quarrelled, I long to make up and have everything settled. There is no peace left your lover till he knows that you love him, once and always. This letter is serious because, beneath it all, I am serious.
Your letters have been the key-notes to my days, and when they have seemed confidential and affectionate, I have been very happy, and when they have been less enthusiastic, I have been troubled and cast down. So, they have enabled me to measure my own disposition. What I wish to write you is this; that everything I ever told you or have written you, was the truth.