in the whole wide world, and that he is the most fortunate man to have
won me.

"And you don't feel that way about it, Bruce. You know that I am not
beautiful, there is no glamour in your love for me. You know that I am
not wonderful, or a fairy Princess--. And you are right and he is
wrong. But it is his wrongness which makes me love him. Because every
woman wants to be beautiful to her lover, and to feel that she is much
desired.

"You will ask why I am telling you all this. Well, there was one
sentence in your letter which called it forth. You say that you want
me because I will hold you to the best that is in you.

"Oh, Bruce, what would you gain if I held you? Wouldn't there be
moments when in spite of me you would swing back to women like Hilda?
You are big and fine, but you are spoiled by feminine worship--it is a
temptation which assails clergymen and doctors--who have, as it were,
many women at their feet.

"Does that sound harsh? I don't mean it that way. I only want you to
come into your own. And if you ever marry I want you to find some
woman you can love as you loved your wife, someone who will touch your
imagination, set you on fire with dreams, and I could never do it.

"Yet even as I finish this letter, I am tempted to tear it up and tell
you only of my real appreciation of the honor you have conferred upon
me in asking me to be your wife. I know that you are offering me more
in many ways than Ulrich Stoelle. I don't like his name, because
something rises up in me against Teuton blood and Teuton nomenclature.
But he loves me, and you do not, and because of his love for me and
mine for him, everything else seems too small to consider.

"Oh, you'd laugh at his house, Bruce, but I love even the fat angels
that are carved on everything from the mahogany chests to the soup
tureens. It is all like some old fairy-tale. I shall make few
changes; it seems such a perfect setting for Ulrich and his busy old
gnome of a father.

"When you get this, pray for my happiness. Oh, I do want to be happy.
I have made the best of things, but there has been much more of gray
than rose-color, and now as I turn my face to the setting sun, I am
seeing---loveliness and light--"

She read it over and sealed it and sent it away. It was several weeks
before it reached Doctor McKenzie. He was very busy, for the spring
drive of the Germans had begun, and shattered men were coming to him
faster than he coul