re students by the death of their
father on the battlefield. To persevere in their respective tastes and
work out their educations had been a labor of love, but an undertaking
which demanded rigorous self-denial on the part of each. Wilbur had
determined to become an architect. Pauline, early interested in the
dogma that woman must no longer be barred from intellectual
companionship with man, had sought to cultivate herself intelligently
without sacrificing her brother's domestic comfort. She had succeeded.
Their home in New York, despite its small dimensions and frugal
hospitality, was already a favorite resort of a little group of
professional people with busy brains and light purses. Wilbur was in the
throes of early progress. He had no relatives or influential friends to
give him business, and employment came slowly. He had been an architect
on his own account for two years, but was still obliged to supplement
his professional orders by work as a draughtsman for others. Yet his
enthusiasm kept him buoyant. In respect to his own work he was
scrupulous; indeed, a stern critic. He abhorred claptrap and specious
effects, and aimed at high standards of artistic expression. This gave
him position among his brother architects, but was incompatible with
meteoric progress. His design for the church at Benham represented much
thought and hope, and he felt happy at his success.

Littleton's familiarity with women, apart from his sister, had been
slight, but his thoughts regarding them were in keeping with a poetic
and aspiring nature. He hoped to marry some day, and he was fond of
picturing to himself in moments of reverie the sort of woman to whom his
heart would be given. In the shrine of his secret fancy she appeared
primarily as an object of reverence, a white-souled angel of light clad
in the graceful outlines of flesh, an Amazon and yet a winsome, tender
spirit, and above all a being imbued with the stimulating intellectual
independence he had been taught to associate with American womanhood.
She would be the loving wife of his bosom and the intelligent sharer of
his thoughts and aspirations--often their guide. So pure and exacting
was his ideal that while alive to the value of coyness and coquetry as
elements of feminine attraction for others, Wilbur had chosen to regard
the maiden of his faith as too serious a spirit to condescend to such
vanities; and from a similar vein of appreciation he was prone to think
of her as