great race, and who was she, Dawson, but the groom who tended and groomed the racer? She thrilled with pride.
Madame Claire read the letter through to the end, and then went at once to her desk, with as free a step, Dawson thought, as she had ever had.
"I must write to him immediately," she said, a flush on her old cheeks.
The letter took her several hours to write, because there was so much to tell him. He kept it, as he kept all her letters, and when he died they came into Eric's possession, and finally into the writer's.
"My dear old Stephen," she wrote,
"Nothing that has happened to me in the last ten years has given me as much pleasure as your letter from Cannes. After a silence a fifth of a century long, you have come alive for me again. Stephen, Stephen! How am I to forgive you for that silence? But I do forgive you, as you knew I would, and I thank you for the happiness you have given me by breaking it.
"I don't believe you have changed much, though you say you are an invalid—gout, phlebitis, rheumatism! Infirm, crotchety old Stephen! Infirm as to legs, but very active, I gather, as to brain,
