have to live up to that decision, whatever it was,
for many months to come, perhaps for years. Perhaps,--who could
say?--perhaps it might affect her character permanently. In a crisis
little forces are important, disproportionately so. And then it was, and
thus it was, that Rosella took her resolve. She raised the iron flap
once more, and saying aloud and with a ring of defiance in her voice:
"Deliberately, deliberately; I don't care," loosed her hold upon the
letter. She heard it fall with a soft rustling impact upon the
accumulated mail-matter in the bottom of the box.

A week later she received her letter back with a stamped legend across
its face informing her with dreadful terseness that the party to whom
the letter was addressed was deceased. She divined a blunder, but for
all that, and with conflicting emotions, sought confirmation in the
daily press. There, at the very end of the column, stood the notice:

VICKERS. At New York, on Sunday, November 12, Harold Anderson
Vickers, in the twenty-third year of his age. Arizona papers please
copy. Notice of funeral hereafter.

Three days later she began to write "Patroclus."

* * * * *

Rosella stood upon the door-step of Trevor's house, closing her umbrella
and shaking the water from the folds of her mackintosh. It was between
eight and nine in the evening, and since morning a fine rain had fallen
steadily. But no stress of weather could have kept Rosella at home that
evening. A week previous she had sent to Trevor the type-written copy of
the completed "Patroclus," and tonight she was to call for the
manuscript and listen to his suggestions and advice.

She had triumphed in the end--triumphed over what, she had not always
cared to inquire. But once the pen in her hand, once "Patroclus" begun,
and the absorption of her mind, her imagination, her every faculty, in
the composition of the story, had not permitted her to think of or to
remember anything else.

And she saw that her work was good. She had tested it by every method,
held it up to her judgment in all positions and from all sides, and in
her mind, so far as she could see, and she was a harsh critic for her
own work, it stood the tests. Not the least of her joys was the pleasure
that she knew Trevor would take in her success. She could foresee just
the expression of his face when he would speak, could forecast just the
tones of the voice, the twinkle of the ki