ith some definite reason for the
writing, flowers or books to thank him for, a walk to arrange, an
invitation to dinner. Charming, bright, friendly notes, with the happy
atmosphere of a perfect understanding between them, of mutual interests
and common enthusiasms.

"She was very different from the other," the boy's mother sighed, as she
took up an unread letter--there were but two more. There was no harm in
reading such letters as these, she thought with relief, and noticed as
she drew the paper from the envelope that the postmark was two months
later.

"You want me to write once that I love you"--that is the way it began.

The woman who read dropped it suddenly as if it had burned her. Was it
possible? Her light-hearted boy, whose short life she had been so sure
had held nothing but a boy's, almost a child's, joys and sorrows! The
other affair was surprise enough, and a sad surprise, yet after all it
had not touched him deeply, she felt certain of that; but this was
another question. She knew instinctively that if love had grown from
such a solid foundation as this sweet and happy and reasonable
friendship with this girl, whose warm heart and deep soul shone through
her clear and simple words, it would be a different love from anything
that other poor, flimsy child could inspire. "L'amitie, c'est l'amour
sans ailes." But sometimes when men and women have let the quiet, safe
god Friendship fold his arms gently around them, he spreads suddenly a
pair of sinning wings and carries them off--to heaven--wherever he
wills it, and only then they see that he is not Friendship, but Love.

She picked up the letter again and read on:

"You want me to write once that I love you, so that you may read it with
your eyes, if you may not hear it with your ears. Is that it--is that
what you want, dear? Which question is a foolish sort of way for me to
waste several drops of ink, considering that your letter is open before
me. And your picture just back of it, your brown eyes looking over the
edge so eagerly, so actually alive that it seems very foolish to be
making signs to you on paper at all. How much simpler just to say half a
word and then--then! Only we two can fill up that dash, but we can fill
it full, can't we? However, I'm not doing what you want, and--will you
not tell yourself, if I tell you something? To do what you want is just
the one thing on earth I like most to do. I think you have magnetized me
into a jelly-fish,