done. I think
you would not like the way the man wrote about you; but I felt, in
reading, that he tried hard to bring his work up to a high level and
make it worthy of the subject. If you realized the good it has done me
to know that you cared enough for my dear little Mirador to want it for
your own, and to restore it from ruin, why, you _could_ not be so very
angry with the newspaper man!

"That time in California, when I was a little girl, seemed a hundred
years ago, or even in another state of existence, till I read the
description of you in your garden--once my garden. Then that part of my
life came back as if it were yesterday. I can see the big olive tree,
which had been let grow as it liked, with all sorts of flowing, dancing
gestures of its branches and twisting of its trunk, the way olives grow
in Italy and the south of France. I used to call it my 'silver
fountain.' And under it there was always a look of moonlight, even in
the brightest noon. I do hope nothing has happened to the tree? Say
kind things to the silver fountain from its little friend Barbara.
Write me about it, and tell me, please, if it means anything fairylike
to you as it did to me. But I know it must, because of what you say
about your garden. How little I thought when the letter came four days
ago, that my long-ago garden and your garden of now, were one and the
same!

"That letter was more than a letter. It was a saving force. Because it
was so much to me, and I wanted to think it all over and over, I
couldn't have dared to answer at once in any case. But it came on an
anniversary, August 18th, the day of his passing. I can't say or write
the word 'death,' since I have begun to learn from you. It was always a
dreadful word, like a bludgeon. But now it's impossible. For me it has
gone out of the language.

"As you walk in your little California garden of the Mirador, will it
please you at all to know that you have given me back the joy of the
English garden, the beautiful garden and the lake, and the sweet, old,
history-haunted house which _he_ left to be mine? Because you, who know
so much, say that he understands and doesn't even need to forgive me, I
take your word. I am not afraid to walk with his memory now. I can
speak to it as I shouldn't have had the courage to with him, when he
was here in the flesh. And because of your letter, August 18th was not
a terrible day. It was more like the wedding day of two spirits than
the annivers