one person could possibly understand another! Perhaps one reason that the comment leaves me unmoved is that I never in any case follow other people's suggestions. How can any person decide for me?

On the whole, Tony dear, always excepting You, I find women more satisfactory than men. I like the masculine mind, but I prefer the feminine temperament. Men seldom understand anything but pure reason, and not that if sentiment is in the least concerned. I know girls who like that very thing, but I think I am wanting in the element of coquetry. I feel a distaste for any emotion that I am unable to share, and I seem not to have the sort of vanity that makes conquest a delight. I don't say this; no woman would believe me, and probably no man except you one is always thought to be posing when one utters any high-minded sentiment-but it is the simple truth, no virtue in me either, for I was made that way from the beginning. My mother never loved but one man, and my father loved her from the moment he saw her to the very end of his life. So you see, Tony, I inherit this single-mindedness from both my parents, and small credit to myself. I simply waited for you to come, and now I love you with all the freshness of nineteen, and the maturity of twenty-four.

Ah, these long, long summer days! One must be very happy not to find them at the close a little sad. The shadows lengthen, the air grows cooler. One knows the twilight is coming, the beautiful scented, dewy dusk, and there creeps in the desire for some one to share its beauty. The desire grows into longing, and the longing gets to be desperate. One is so helpless! A little heart beating and fluttering, struggling to have its waythat is all it can do. No one knows. Other interests are being consulted, no matter about the little heart; it will quiet down by and by, as a baby stops crying from sheer exhaustion, and goes to sleep. But what a pity! A beautiful night wasted for that little heart, and that night can never come again. And the sun sets inexorably, calling to the stars to come out and mock at you. The day lilies open their throats, and the perfume sets the poor little heart beating faster. You reach out your hand for that other hand,

and strain your eyes into the shadows. Something must come-but there is nothing, nothing, only the intangible darkness. Oh, Tony, Tony, I want you, I want you!

I have been foolish. I ought not to send this sheet, but I will because you asked me to give you the record of each day as nearly as I could. After all, dear, it is a great thing to know what love is, even though there is no such pain as love can bring. And a woman, you know, can have the relief of crying as I did just now -but don't take that to heart. I really feel better for it; smile now, when you read this. As a matter of fact I am practical enough to appreciate the very excellent and sufficient reasons why I should stay here for a little longer. I cannot respect them as perhaps I shall in the days to come when I have forgotten the loneliness. But when you get this letter it will be morning, and I am seldom sad in the morning. So please praise me for being your own brave Madge.

Thursday, August 5th.

It is cooler to-day and Bonnie, in an exquisite pink wrapper trimmed with delicate lace, is importuning me to go to Boston. She loves to do the shops and lunch at Parker's, where she is continually getting excited over the belief that she has recognised some old acquaintance in a lady or gentleman of, say, forty, oblivious of the fact that all her friends of bygone years have been growing old along with herself, and if not dead and gone, are almost certainly grey-haired and probably feeble. It is rather pathetic, but the exercise affords her a certain happiness, and provides her with a skeleton to hang reminiscences upon. I listen a little, and follow my own thoughts in undercurrent. Forty years hence I shall probably be prattling to some young girl whose mother is a baby now, about "Mr. Seymour, my dear, I always called him Tony," and she will be thinking of her own lover and not care whether your eyes were blue or hazel.

But as regards the case in point, I suppose I am going with Bonnie. Rules are somewhat relaxed, it is considered proper that we should go abroad for necessary purposes, and Bonnie says she must have a couple of muslin blouses, she has posi

tively nothing fit to put on when we go driving of a hot day. Just now she is declaring that the shops are never so fascinating as they are in summer, all the doors wide open, and everything light and airy displayed, no horrid, heavy stuffs. I have assented rather absently to the truth of what she says, and she has darted off to get ready, charging me by no means to miss the 9:15 train, as the next does not leave until 10:40.

So you see, dear, this must be a short letter. I will take it with me and post it in Boston, just to mystify you. It will do both Bonnie and me good to get away from Pullen for a few hours. I wish we could take the child, but Myles could not make so sudden a decision. Two nights and a day would be necessary to consider such an important matter. The reviews you sent I will certainly read, especially the marked articles. I am going to forbid Larry's calling oftener than twice a week, he is too much of an interruption to serious thought. Breakfast.

I hate sending this miserable little letter.

Friday, August 5th.

I was glad to get home last night. My room breathes so of you and I could get out your letters and read them all over before I went to bed. I needed their comfort, as I could not go after the one I should have had yesterday morning.

Bonnie was tired and fretful; the heat had uncurled her hair, and she mourned all the way home in the train that she knew she looked a fright, and almost abused me because my own hair curls all the tighter for the humidity. Myles was coldly surprised to know of our outing, he had been away all day himself on business, and had not heard of it until he came in the evening, looking careful and immaculate in his blue serge suit and white waistcoat. He asked questions about my grandmother which of course I could not answer, and the air grew so frigid that one almost needed a wrap.

Miss Burden came out her room at eight o'clock, heavy-eyed and disconsolate, and admitted that she had slept less. than three hours during the entire day; it takes her a week, she says, to get used to the reversal of conditions when she is on night duty. Bonnie and I undid our purchases in our rooms, and somehow they looked commonplace and unprofit

able. At last I sent her to bed and sat down in a wrapper to read your lettersevery one I have had from you since I came here. I grew happy in the reading and forgot all that was unpleasant and disappointing.

And oh, the rare prize this morning! Two letters! I am glad you are going up the river for a little breathing space. The city must be frightfully hot. Be careful of your health; there is no absolute safety for you when I am not there to take care of you. How have you managed without me all these twenty-eight years? Tony, how I worship you for the way you write to me! Exactly as if I were a man with a man's understanding. You show your own greatness; it is only the truly great among men who do full justice to a woman's mind. I have been reading to-day some of the marked articles. The one on Labour and Capital interested me particularly because it sounded so exactly like you. I got Bonnie in and read it aloud to her for the mere pleasure of hearing myself expound it to her in the phrases I thought you would use, and when Lawrence called in the middle of it I sent down word that I had a headache, which was likely enough to have been the fact, the air is so hot and close to-day.

One great difficulty seems to me to lie in the way of reform, and that is the surprising difference between theory and practice. Certain courses of reasoning may be logically sound, yet the class that some readjustment of conditions aims to benefit, may, when the time comes, meet the plan with an armed resistance. It is disappointingly true of the individuals one would like to help a little that one cannot make them look in the direction from which help ought to come; they persist in gazing the other way. If it were only to supplement their intelligence by ours, the solution would be simple. But I suppose it is true that any class of people can accept only such ameliorations as are worked out on its own lines of thinking and living, and are in direct approach to its own ideals. Am I right? At any rate I find the whole subject so interesting that I long for the time when I can talk it over with you. All of life has opened since I knew you. Every channel has broadened as a river widens when it nears the sea, and new vistas are

question every movement of mine, but I shall have two or three days to make my plans. Some little harmless fiction, if it only sounds plausible, will be justifiable for such an end. Your letter of Friday will tell me if you are coming, and thenthree days to dream of the joy of seeing you in solid substantial flesh and blood! Oh, is it really to be? It is "too good," I fear, to "come true." What an ugly expression! Yet it is the current phrase to throw doubt upon everything we want. Too good not to be true-why do we not say that instead? I am going to say that over and over to myself; too good not to be true-Tony is coming. Then perhaps I may bring you by moral force. You see, dear, how strangely unlike my normal self I have become, so full of fears and forebodings. It seems to me that these people are all in league to devise fresh difficulties for me at every turn. Now, that idea is, in itself, not normal.

For instance, Miss Mackillay, who is on day duty now, gets dreadfully on my nerves. I shall be so thankful when she spends her days in bed again. She is a big, stout, strong, uncompromising person, hopelessly, unforgivably plain, with an illbred habit of talking about my grandmother's symptoms and her own opinion of them at the table-so different from dear, diplomatic little Burden, whom I am getting quite to be fond of. Her nurse's cap, instead of framing her face and softening its heavy outlines, sets on top of her head, as if it were some object that had landed there by mistake. I do not mean to be ill-natured, and I mean to be just as far as her intentions go. I believe the doctors call her a very good nurse, but she takes liberties that I should not allow if it were not for Myles's encouragement of them. She knows, of course, that he is in authority here, and he feels that from her he is getting facts-there is nothing on earth that Myles loves as he loves facts. So when he takes luncheon or dinner with us, her conversational abilities have generous scope, and the details of the sickroom are served out from soup to coffee. Is it strange that I grow thin and nervous?

To-day he happened in at the luncheon hour and stayed to sit down with us, as a matter of course. Myles eats his salad with salt only, taking each leaf in his fingers, sprinkling the salt on it, rolling it

up with precision, and then biting it exactly in halves. It is fascinating to watch him. There is some essential quality lacking in a man who is afraid of oil.

By and by Miss Mackillay said, in her precise, oracular way, "Mr. Havenden, since I've been doing day duty this last time, I've come very much under the conviction that Mrs. Pullen has something on her mind. It can't be there's anything we don't do for her. I've added several things to our list, and still she don't seem to be satisfied. Don't you suppose there is something she wants to communicate in regard to her affairs? What do you think? It seems to me she'd gain faster if she could just speak out once, and get that thing, whatever it is, settled, if it can be. Don't you suppose we can find out, someway, what it is that worries her? I should feel so glad if I could see her with her poor mind more at rest. Because she is gaining. Not on the side the shock was, we don't look for any improvement there, but in her general health. I have thought sometimes it would be a good thing, Mr. Havenden, if you were to talk with her and see if you could arrive at some understanding with her. Perhaps you could suggest something that we haven't," and so on.

Incomprehensibly enough, Myles did not appear at all desirous of continuing the discussion just then. I discovered the reason of his reserve when after luncheon he asked me into the drawingroom, where he talked in a very exasperating way for half an hour, taking a high authoritative tone, and finding me, I am afraid, very dense of perception.

But it seems he considers it my place and duty to ascertain if possible, the cause of my grandmother's disquietude, and in order to do that he suggests that I sit down beside her bed and discourse upon different matters that I know to have been of interest to her, watching for the change of expression in her face. which he thinks will occur when the momentous subject is touched upon.

Well, Tony, do you agree with me that life is just now offering me some delicate problems to solve? Myles expressed himself as having no doubt whatever of my ability to elucidate this one, the uncertainty resting solely, as he implied without saying it, upon my willingness to try. I thanked him for his confidence in

me, but seeing that my grandmother and I have never had one thought, wish or opinion in common, and that her face is like a mask in its inflexibility, except for the one eye which it frightens the wits out of me to meet, I am sure I should only disappoint him and unnerve myself by making the attempt, which I do not in the very least intend to do. If they drive me to this terrible, one-sided interview with her, I shall shut and lock the door upon them, and read Cowper's poems to her for half an hour, at the end of which time I will tell them what I think that is a cruel business to wring last requests from a helpless old woman, whose one greatest desire must be die in peace.

Do I seem to you unkind or unreasonable, Tony? Certainly, with a little more pushing, one might go mad in this place. I think you know that I would make any rightful sacrifice for my grandmother's peace of mind, but if we joined issue and she asked in her dumbness something I could not grant, it might kill her and what then? I should be her murderer, and besides, cui bono? She has her rights, undoubtedly, but so have I mine, even if I am alive and in health. The dying do not need to have their way as we do. Earthly things can matter very little to them, and to us they matter enormously.

Well, I must put the whole painful subject from me. I look forward to seeing you on Tuesday, and we will have the day together. We will make no mention of unpleasant things, and I shall come home with new strength, enough, I hope, to last me through the rest of this trying time. Shall you come by boat or train? Write me exact particulars about meeting

you.

Friday, August 27th.

I felt, all the way to South Pullen that a cruel disappointment awaited me there, and when the thick letter was handed me, I knew it was full of reasons why you were not coming. I put it in my pocket, and did not open it along the way, as I usually do. At the gate that leads into the meadow I turned in and walked over toward the river, to a place near the bank where Maidie and I often sit and talk or read. There is a low, broad rock under some trees, and I sat down and leaned my head against a tree-trunk and closed

my eyes. It is needless to tell you what happened next, because a woman can do only one thing in her fearful helplessness against fate. For a little while I did not feel that I could bear to read what you had written. It seemed cruel in you not to be coming. I had tried so desperately to get through the days of uncertainty that I was completely unnerved when the disappointment came. I will not tell you all my thoughts; they were born out of the coldness and trouble, and lack of understanding that is all about me here, and I never once blamed you, only, perhaps, for the first few minutes when you seemed a part of fate. You will forgive me, will you not, dearest, for that one little lapse in loyalty? Before I opened your letter I said, "Tony, I love you, and all you do is right."

It was your kindness and delicacy in saying what you had to say that added the last touch to break me down—for all you did say I love you only the more. It is all true; I will learn it by heart, dear, and make it my own.

After I had read the letter through, I slipped down on the grass and folded my arms on the rock and cried again. It is a thing I seldom do, Tony, believe me. You will not come into possession of a weeping woman when you take me for better or for worse. When I do cry, it is violent for a few minutes, then I get through all at once, and it seems as if there were not another tear to come. But I was tired this morning, and so when I had stopped sobbing, I kept my face down and lay still. Presently I heard a slight sound near by. I raised my head, and Mr. Norrice was standing a little way off. He came forward at once, with his face full of kindness and solicitude, and inquired if there was anything he could do for me.

I must have been an unpleasing sight, with my nose and eyelids all pink and swollen, but there was nothing to do but make the best of his presence, so I said, "Thank you, Mr. Norrice, nothing, unless you can get me some water to bathe my face."

In an instant he had a tin tobacco box in his hand, and was emptying the contents into his pocket. Then he disappeared down the river bank, and came back with a boxful of water. I dipped my handkerchief in it and sopped my eyes while