raid! It contained a good many of the opinions I have
expressed to you, and a good many more besides. I really believe it will
attract some attention. At any rate, the simple fact that it is to be
published makes an era in my life. This will seem pitiful to you, no
doubt, who publish yourself, have been before the world these several
years, and are flushed with every kind of triumph; but to me it's simply
a tremendous affair. It makes me believe I may do something; it has
changed the whole way I look at my future. I have been building castles
in the air, and I have put you in the biggest and fairest of them.
That's a great change, and, as I say, it's really why I came on."

Verena lost not a word of this gentle, conciliatory, explicit statement;
it was full of surprises for her, and as soon as Ransom had stopped
speaking she inquired: "Why, didn't you feel satisfied about your future
before?"

Her tone made him feel how little she had suspected he could have the
weakness of a discouragement, how little of a question it must have
seemed to her that he would one day triumph on his own erratic line. It
was the sweetest tribute he had yet received to the idea that he might
have ability; the letter of the editor of the _Rational Review_ was
nothing to it. "No, I felt very blue; it didn't seem to me at all clear
that there was a place for me in the world."

"Gracious!" said Verena Tarrant.

A quarter of an hour later Miss Birdseye, who had returned to her
letters (she had a correspondent at Framingham who usually wrote fifteen
pages), became aware that Verena, who was now alone, was re-entering the
house. She stopped her on her way, and said she hoped she hadn't pushed
Mr. Ransom overboard.

"Oh no; he has gone off--round the other way."

"Well, I hope he is going to speak for us soon."

Verena hesitated a moment. "He speaks with the pen. He has written a
very fine article--for the _Rational Review_."

Miss Birdseye gazed at her young friend complacently; the sheets of her
interminable letter fluttered in the breeze. "Well, it's delightful to
see the way it goes on, isn't it?"

Verena scarcely knew what to say; then, remembering that Doctor Prance
had told her that they might lose their dear old companion any day, and
confronting it with something Basil Ransom had just said--that the
_Rational Review_ was a quarterly and the editor had notified him that
his article would appear only in the number after the next--she