CHAPTER 23
Of all the multitudinous ways in which Dan Cupid, Unlimited, does
business, none is more nefarious than his course by correspondence. Once
he has induced two guileless clients to plunge into the traffic of love
letters, the rest is easy. Wild speculation in love stock, false
valuations, hysterical desire to buy in the cheapest and sell in the
dearest market, invariably follow. Before the end of the month Harold
Phipps and Eleanor Bartlett were gambling in the love market with a
recklessness that would have staggered the most hardened old speculator.
Harold, instead of being handicapped by his absence at the most critical
point in his love affair, took advantage of it to exhibit one of his most
brilliant accomplishments. He sent Eleanor a handsome tooled-leather
portfolio to hold his letters, which he wrote on loose-leaf sheets and
mailed unfolded. They were letters that deserved preservation, prose
poems composed with infinite pains and copied with meticulous care. If
the potpourri was at times redolent of the dried flowers of other men's
loves, Eleanor was blissfully unaware of it. When he wrote of the
lonesome October of his most immemorial year, or spoke of her pilgrim
soul coming to him at midnight in the silence of the sleep-time, she
thrilled with admiration for his genius.
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