here will be something gained. Some day, perhaps, I
shall reach the upper air where you soar--perhaps I shall "mount as an
eagle."

Your message----! Dear child--do you know how sweet you are? I don't
know all the verses--but that one I do know. Yet I had let myself
forget, and you brought it back to me with all its strong assurance.

Your decision that it was best to tell what there is to tell, to let
nothing be hidden, is one which I should have made long ago. Only of
late have I realized that concealment brings in its train a thousand
horrors. One lives in fear, dreading that which must inevitably come.
Yet I do not think I must be blamed too much. I was beaten and bruised
by the knowledge of my overthrow. I only wanted to crawl into a hole
and be forgotten.

Even now, I find myself unfolding slowly. I have lived so long in the
dark, and the light seems to blind my eyes!

It is strange that I should have remembered Delilah Jeliffe, but not
strange that she should have remembered me; for I stood alone in the
pulpit, but she was one of a crowd. Since your letter, I have been
thinking back, and I can see her as she sat reading in the front pew,
big and rather fine with her black hair and her bold eyes. I think
that perhaps the thing which made me remember her was the fleeting
thought that her type stood usually for the material in woman, and I
wondered if in her case outward appearances were as deceptive as they
were in my wife--with her saint's eyes, and her distorted moral vision.
Perhaps I was intuitively right, and that beneath Delilah Jeliffe's
exterior there is a certain fineness, and that these funny fads of
dress and decorations are merely in some way her striving toward the
expression of her real self.

What you tell me of your talk with your cousin Grace interests me very
much. I fancy she is more womanly than she is willing to admit. Yet
she should marry. Every woman should marry, except you--who are going
to be my friend! There peeps out my selfishness--but I shall let it
stand.

No, I don't like the idea that you must work. I don't want you to try
your wings. I want you to sit safe in your nest in the top of the
Tower, and write letters to me!

Labor, office drudgery, are things which sap the color from a woman's
cheeks, and strength from her body. She grows into a machine, and you
are a bird, to fly and light on the nearest branch and sing!

But now you will want to know somethi