after I had been obliged to stop
writing, but because I'd been able to send none, nothing seemed right.
I felt as if I had lost hold upon you. I groped for you in the
darkness, but because I had dropped your hand, I was punished by not
finding it again.

"Mother suffered so much that I could not wish to keep her. For two
days and nights after she went, I lay in a kind of stupor. You see, I
hadn't slept more than an hour out of the twenty-four, for weeks, so I
suppose I had to make up somehow, or break. I was hardly conscious at
all, and they let me lie without rousing me up to eat or drink. But at
last I waked of my own accord, out of a dream, it must have been,
though I don't remember the dream. I remember only that I thought you
were calling me, though the voice sounded like _his_. Immediately
after, I seemed to hear the words, 'John Sanbourne believes you've
stopped writing to him because you were vexed at his refusal of the
photograph.' I started up, tingling all over with shame, for I saw that
it might easily be true. I didn't go to sleep again. I asked for a
telegraph form, and sent the cable to you which I know you received
next day, because of the date of your answer.

"I beg of you not to take your friendship away from me. I shall need it
more than ever now, if possible, because my mother is gone. I don't
feel that she will come back to me in spirit, because she was unhappy
here, and at the end was glad to go. She loved me, I'm sure, but not in
the way which makes one spirit indispensable to the other. I think
after the war gloom of this world, and her own pain, she will want to
be very quiet and peaceful for a while in beautiful surroundings, where
she can feel young and gay again, and not trouble herself to remember
that she was the mother of a grown-up, sad woman down on earth. I want
her spirit to be happy in its own way, so I'm not even going to try and
call her to me.

"She looked no more than seventeen in her white dress, in a white-lined
coffin; and seeing her like that, so young and almost coquettishly
pretty, made me realize why she had so bitterly regretted the passing
of her youth, and had clung desperately to its ragged edges. I gave her
a bed and a covering of her favorite flowers, though they were not
those I care for most: gardenias and camellias and orchids. I associate
them always with hot-houses and florists' shops, which seem to me like
the slave markets of the flower world--don't they t