one I shall ever tell.

But I shall tell you this, and glory in the telling. That if I had a
life to offer of honor and of achievement, I should offer it now to
you. That if I had met you as a dreaming boy, I would have tried to
match my dreams to yours.

You may say that with the death of my wife things have changed. That I
might yet find a place to preach, to teach--to speak to audiences and
to sway them.

But any reentrance into the world means the bringing up of the old
story--the question--the whispered comment. I do not think that I am a
coward. For the sake of a cause, I could face death with courage. But
I cannot face questioning eyes and whispering lips.

So I am dedicated for all my future to mediocrity. And what has
mediocrity to do with you, who have "never turned your back, but
marched face forward"?

And so I am going away. Not so quickly that there will be comment.
But quickly enough to relieve you of future embarrassment in my behalf.

I do not know that you will answer this. But I know that whatever your
verdict, whether I am still to have the grace of your friendship or to
lose it forever, I am glad to have lived this one year in the Tower
Rooms. I am glad to have known the one woman who has given me back--my
boyish dreams of all women.

And now a last line. If ever in all the years to come you should have
need of me, I am at your service. I shall count nothing too hard that
you may ask. I am whimsically aware that in the midst of all this
darkness and tragedy my offer is that of the Mouse to the Lion. But
there came a day when the Mouse paid its debt. Ask me to pay mine, and
I will come--from the ends of the earth.

This was the letter which Mary found the next morning on her desk in
the little office room into which Roger had been shown on the night of
the wedding. She recognized his firm script and found herself
trembling as she touched the square white envelope.

But she laid the letter aside until she had given Susan her orders,
until she had given other orders over the telephone, until she had
interviewed the furnace man and the butcher's boy, and had written and
mailed certain checks.

Then she took the letter with her to her own room, locked the door and
read it.

Constance, knocking a little later, was let in, and found her sister
dressed and ready for the street.

"I've a dozen engagements," Mary said. She was drawing on her gloves
and smiling. She was, per