than yourself. You had always been a champion of old ladies and
children. Every animal, from Peter Pan to your old fat horse--that old
fat horse now is living in clover since you acquired your motor
cars--adored and followed you.

"And one day I told Van Rosen--that I couldn't marry him. You don't
know how humble I felt to think that I might have hurt him. But in
that moment his real self showed. He was angry, furiously angry, and I
knew all at once that it was my money, and not me that he wanted.

"And so I came back to you----

"But you had Bettina, and there was no place for me. No place for the
little dark-eyed girl who had listened to the big boy on stormy
nights, no place for the woman who had not known her own heart----

"And now you want me to be your friend. But I can't be your
friend--Anthony. Friendship is for the man and woman who have never
loved. A friendship which is the aftermath of love is the shadow after
the substance. Can't you see that it is so? Can't you see that there
would be just two things which might happen? If I stayed here and
tried to be your friend, either I should knit myself to you by ties
which should bind you to your wife, or we should drift apart, having
the perfect memory neither of love nor of friendship.

"Bettina is very young, but she has depths of which you have not
dreamed, of which I had not dreamed, until I talked with her last
night. I went up to her room, and we had a very sweet and tender
confidence. It was almost dawn before I left her. She showed me much
of her heart, as she will, I hope, some day show it to you----

"Hers is a little white soul, dear friend. On the surface she has her
girlish petulances, her youthful prejudices. But these? Why, I had a
thousand of them, Anthony. How I snubbed those poor students whom you
brought with you one afternoon to tea because their elbows were shiny
and their shoes rusty. I was such a little snob, Anthony. How I should
welcome them now--those great doctors, who have done so much for
humanity.

"It is life which teaches us, dear friend. It will teach Bettina. And
it must teach me this: To bear the hard things. Do you remember in
those days when we read of knights on the battle-field that we loved
those who died fighting? And how we hated those who ran away? Well,
I'm going to fight--but my fight must begin by running away.

"It isn't a battle which