t my own feelings. But jealousy
doesn't mean love. When people really love, I think it's seldom
that they're jealous. What makes people jealous usually is
suspecting the other person of having the same sort of secret they
have themselves. It hurt my vanity that you didn't love me; and it
stung me to think you cared for some one else, just as I did.

I want you to remember me gently. And somehow I think that, after
you've read this, you will, even if you did love some one else. If
you ever see this at all, Harvey--and I may tear it up some day on
impulse--but if you ever do see it, I shall be dead, and we shall
both be free. And I want you to come to me and look at me and--

It ended thus abruptly. No doubt she had intended to open the envelope
and finish it--but, what more was there to say?

I think she must have been content with the thoughts that were in my
mind as I looked down at her lying in death's inscrutable calm. I had
one of my secretaries hunt out the man she had loved--a sad, stranded
wreck of a man he had become; but since that day he has been sheltered
at least from the worst of the bufferings to which his incapacity for
life exposed him.

There was a time when I despised incapables; then I pitied them; but
latterly I have felt for them the sympathetic sense of brotherhood. Are
we not all incapables? Differing only in degree, and how slightly there,
if we look at ourselves without vanity; like practice-sketches put upon
the slate by Nature's learning hand and impatiently sponged away.

XXX

A PHILOSOPHER RUDELY INTERRUPTED

After the funeral I lingered at our Fredonia place. There was the estate
to settle; my two daughters had now no one to look after them; Junior
must be started right at learning the business of which he would soon be
the head, as his uncle had shown himself far too easy-going for large
executive responsibility. So, I stayed on, doing just enough to keep a
face of plausibility upon my pretexts for not returning to Washington.
The fact was that Carlotta's death had deepened my mood of distaste into
disgust. It had set me to brooding over the futility and pettiness of my
activities in politics, of all activities of whatever kind. I watched Ed
and my children resuming the routine of their lives, swiftly adjusting
themselves to the loss of one who had been so dear to them and
apparently so necessary to their happiness. The cry of "man ove