ur o'clock Sandy came to my library with
word that the boy was asleep and that Percy had moved up a cot and would
sleep in his room the rest of the night. Poor Sandy looked sort of ashen
and haggard and done with life. As I looked at him, I thought about how
desperately he worked to save others, and never saved himself, and about
that dismal home of his, with never a touch of cheer, and the horrible
tragedy in the background of his life. All the rancor I've been saving
up seemed to vanish, and a wave of sympathy swept over me. I stretched
my hand out to him; he stretched his out to me. And suddenly--I don't
know--something electric happened. In another moment we were in each
other's arms. He loosened my hands, and put me down in the big armchair.

"My God! Sallie, do you think I'm made of iron?" he said and walked out.
I went to sleep in the chair, and when I woke the sun was shining in my
eyes and Jane was standing over me in amazed consternation.

This morning at eleven he came back, looked me coldly in the eye without
so much as the flicker of an eyelash, and told me that Thomas was to
have hot milk every two hours and that the spots in Maggie Peters's
throat must be watched.

Here we are back on our old standing, and positively I don't know but
what I dreamed that one minute in the night!

But it would be a piquant situation, wouldn't it, if Sandy and I
should discover that we were falling in love with each other, he with a
perfectly good wife in the insane asylum and I with an outraged fiance
in Washington? I don't know but what the wisest thing for me to do is to
resign at once and take myself home, where I can placidly settle down
to a few months of embroidering "S McB" on table-cloths, like any other
respectable engaged girl.

I repeat very firmly that this letter isn't for Jervis's consumption.
Tear it into little pieces and scatter them in the Caribbean.

S.

January 3.

Dear Gordon:

You are right to be annoyed. I know I'm not a satisfactory love letter
writer. I have only to glance at the published correspondence of
Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning to realize that the warmth of my
style is not up to standard. But you know already--you have known a long
time--that I am not a very emotional person. I suppose I might write a
lot of such things as: "Every waking moment you are in my thoughts." "My
dear boy, I only live when you are near." But it wouldn't be absolutely
true. You don't fill all