tted only a
lurid glare into the room, which grew cold and colourless again when the
rain ceased. Inez had been sitting motionless a long time, her elbow on
the table, her chin resting upon her loosely clasped white hands, her
blind face turned upward, listening to the turning of the pages and to
the occasional scratching of her sister's pen. She sighed, moved, and
let her hands fall upon the table before her in a helpless, half
despairing way, as she leaned back in the big carved chair. Dolores
looked up at once, for she was used to helping her sister in her
slightest needs and to giving her a ready sympathy in every mood.

"What is it?" she asked quickly. "Do you want anything, dear?"

"Have you almost finished?"

The girl's voice would almost have told that she was blind. It was sweet
and low, but it lacked life; though not weak, it was uncertain in
strength and full of a longing that could never be satisfied, but that
often seemed to come within possible reach of satisfaction. There was in
the tones, too, the perpetual doubt of one from whom anything might be
hidden by silence, or by the least tarn of words. Every passing hope and
fear, and every pleasure and pain, were translated into sound by its
quick changes. It trusted but could not always quite promise to believe;
it swelled and sank as the sensitive heart beat faster or slower. It
came from a world without light, in which only sound had meaning, and
only touch was certainty.

"Yes," answered Dolores. "I have almost finished--there is only half a
page more to read over."

"And why do you read it over?" asked Inez. "Do you change what you have
written? Do you not think now exactly as you did when you wrote?"

"No; I feel a great deal more--I want better words! And then it all
seems so little, and so badly written, and I want to say things that no
one ever said before, many, many things. He will laugh--no, not that!
How could he? But my letter will seem childish to him. I know it will. I
wish I had never written it I Do you think I had better give it to him,
after all?"

"How can I tell?" asked Inez hopelessly. "You have never read it to me.
I do not know what you have said to him."

"I have said that I love him as no man was ever loved before," answered
Dolores, and the true words seemed to thrill with a life of their own as
she spoke them.

Then she was silent for a moment, and looked down at the written pages
without seeing them. Inez did not move,