t was the
sense of my loss that made my love well up from unfathomable depths to
overwhelm me. I was angry. My pride was hurt. I counted over the
years of my untiring devotion to her, and they seemed to sum up the
best years of my life. That the telegram foreran a more explicit
statement there could be no doubt. After all she had written about the
flat, her instructions that the furniture which she had inherited from
her aunt must fit in, that my table must be near her easel--after all
these evidences of her thought--her command could mean only that our
romance was at an end and our dreams dissipated into air. There was
some other man, I thought--perhaps Boller of '89--and remembering him,
his picturesque garb and ridiculous pose, my own vanity was deeply cut.
Until late that night I sat smoking violently and turning over in my
mind the problem and all its dreadful possibilities. In bed, Sleep,
the friend of woe, was long coming with her kindly ministrations, and
yet held me so long under her beneficent influence that when I awoke I
found lying beside my bed, tossed there through a crack in the door,
the corpulent letter addressed in the tall, angular hand.

The first line reassured me. Strangely enough, being reassured,
knowing that all the night's fears were silly phantasies born of a
jealous mind, I fell back on my pillow and, holding the letter above my
eyes, read as I had read a hundred of its fellows. Strangely enough, I
said over and over to myself with grim determination that I loved
Gladys Todd. From what she had written it was evident that I need have
no fear that her love was not altogether mine. She believed that where
two persons loved as we did, two persons who possessed each other in
such perfect happiness, it was our duty to sacrifice ourselves a little
for those less blessed than we were. As we gave so we received, and in
giving up our summer of happiness for the happiness of others our
winter would be doubly bright. I must confess that while I agreed with
her as to the duty of self-sacrifice I was a little irritated when I
found that our happiness must be deferred for Judge Bundy's sake. He
was the last person in the world whom I had expected could have any
influence on a matter so personal as the date of my marriage. Now
Gladys called to my mind the recent death of his wife, and she spoke of
his being ill, inconsolable, and miserably lonely. His life was at
stake unless he could have a