im: "Madame Covington and I have decided that we want to help
every year one or more young men needing help. If you will send to us
those you approve of, we will lend them enough to finish their course."

I thought it would be nicer to lend the money than give it to them,
because they would feel better about it. And they could be as long as
they wished in paying it back, or if they fell into hard luck need
never pay it back.

So every year we would start as many as we could, each of us paying
half. They would come to us, and we would get to know them, and we
would watch them through, and after that watch them fight the good
fight. Why, in no time, Monte, we would have quite a family to watch
over; and they would come to you for advice, and perhaps sometimes to
me. Think what an interest that would add to your life! It would be
so good for you, Monte. And good for me, too. Even if we had--oh,
Monte, we might in time have had boys of our own in Harvard too! Then
they would have selected other boys for us, and that would have been
good for them too.

Here by myself I can tell you these things, because--because, God keep
me, you cannot hear. You did not think I could dream such dreams as
those, did you? You thought I was always thinking of myself and my own
happiness, and of nothing else. You thought I asked everything and
wished to give nothing. But that was before I knew what love is. That
was before you touched me with the magic wand. That was before I
learned that our individual lives are as brief as the sparks that fly
upward, except as we live them through others; and that then--they are
eternal. It was within our grasp, Monte, dear, and we trifled with it
and let it go.

No, not you. It was I who refused the gift. Some day it will come to
you again, through some other. That is what I tell myself over and
over again. I don't think men are like women. They do not give so
much of themselves, and so they may choose from two or three. So in
time, as you wander about, you will find some one who will hold out her
arms, and you will come. She will give you everything she has,--all
honest women do that,--but it will not be all I would have given. You
may think so, and so be happy; but it will not be true. I shall always
know the difference. And you will give her what you have, but it will
not be what you would have given me--what I would have drawn out of
you. I shall always know that. Because,