rsely.

"I wanted to make them fine. I wanted to make them brilliant. I wanted
to make them interesting. And of course I could not do it by myself. I
am nothing but a copycat. I just quoted a lot of things I had heard you
say; and I did worse than that, Peter. I watched the little whimsy lines
around your mouth and I tried to interpret the perfectly lovely things
they would make you say to a woman if you loved her and were building a
dream house for her. And oh, Peter, it's too ghastly; I don't believe I
can tell you."

"This is pretty serious business, Linda," said Peter gravely. "Having
gone this far you are in honor bound to finish. It would not be fair to
leave me with half a truth. What is the result of this impersonation?"

"Oh, Peter," sobbed Linda, breaking down again, "you're going to hate
me; I know you're going to hate me and Marian's going to hate me; and I
didn't mean a thing but the kindest thing in all the world."

"Don't talk like that, Linda," said Peter. "If your friend is all you
say she is, she is bound to understand. And as for me, I am not very
likely to misjudge you. But be quick about it. What did you do, Linda?"

"Why, I just wrote these letters that I am telling you about," said
Linda, "and I said the things that I thought would comfort her and
entertain her and help with her work; and these are the answers that
she wrote me, and I don't think I realized till last night that she
was truly attributing them to any one man, truly believing in them. Oh,
Peter, I wasn't asleep a minute all last night, and for the first time I
failed in my lessons today."

"And what is the culmination, Linda?" urged Peter.

"She liked the letters, Peter. They meant all I intended them to and
they must have meant something I never could have imagined. And in San
Francisco one of the firm where she studies--a very fine man she says he
is, Peter; I can see that in every way he would be quite right for her;
and I had a letter from her last night, and, Peter, he had asked her to
marry him, to have a lifelong chance at work she's crazy about. He
had offered her a beautiful home with everything that great wealth and
culture and good taste could afford. He had offered her the mothering of
his little daughter; and she refused him, Peter, refused him because she
is in love, with all the love there is left in her disappointed, hurt
heart, with the personality that these letters represent to her; and
that personality is y