s that
you remember. I had made up my mind to stay here,--but not with the things
that I remembered. The first thing I did was to clean out the house from
cellar to garret. I am not permitted to sell the contents of this house,
but there was nothing to prevent me from storing them. Your grandfather
overlooked that little point, I fear. In any event, that was the first
thing I did. Everything is gone, mind you,--even to the portrait that used
to hang over the mantelpiece there,--and it was the only cheerful object in
the house. I wish I could show you my boudoir, my bedroom, and the rooms
in which Mr. Thorpe lived. You--you would love them."

He was now standing in the middle of the room, staring about him at the
handiwork of Aladdin.

"Why, it isn't--it will not be so dreadful, after all," he said slowly.
"You have made it all so lovely, so homelike, so much like yourself
that--you will not find it so hard to live here as I--"

"I wanted you to like it, Braden. I wanted you to see the place,--to see
what I have done to make it bright and cheerful and endurable. No, I
sha'n't find it so hard to live here. I was sure that some day you would
come to see me here and I wanted you to feel that--that it wasn't as hard
for me as you thought it would be. I have been a coward, though. I confess
that I could not have lived here with all those things about to--to remind
me of--You see, I just _had_ to make the place possible. I hope you are not
offended with me for what I have done. I have played havoc with sentiment
and association, and you may feel that I--"

"Offended? Good heavens, Anne, why should I be offended? You have a right
to do what you like here."

"Ah, but I do not forget that it is _your_ home, Braden, not mine. It will
always be home to you, and I fear it can never be that to me. This is not
much in the way of a library now, I confess. Thirty cases of books are
safely stored away,--all of those old first editions and things of that
sort. They meant nothing to me. I don't know what a first edition is, and
I never could see any sense in those funny things he called missals, nor
the incunabula, if that's the way you pronounce it. You may have liked
them, Braden. If you care for them, if you would like to have them in your
own house, you must let me _lend_ them to you. Everybody borrows books,
you know. It would be quite an original idea to lend a whole library,
wouldn't it? If you--"

"They are better off in the