She had moved away. Mechanically she was arranging books and papers on her desk. “I was going over an old bureau in my mother’s room a while ago,” she said. “And in a little secret drawer I found a packet of letters written to her by my father. I suppose I ought not to have read them, but I don’t regret it. I thought they were the letters he had written her in their courting days. They were quite beautiful letters. No one but a lover could have written them. But there were passages in them that puzzled me. There was a postscript to one, telling her of a new underclothing made from pine wood that the doctors were recommending for rheumatism, and asking her if she would like to try it. And in another there was talk about children. And then it occurred to me to look at the date marks on the outside of the envelopes. They were letters he had written her at intervals during the last few years of her life; and I remembered then how happy they had been together just before the end. Our lives are like gardens, I always think. Perhaps we can’t help the weeds coming, but that doesn’t make the flowers less beautiful.” She turned her face again to the woman. “And even if so,” she said, “even if sooner or later the glory does fade, at least we have seen it--have seen God’s face. “I remember a blind boy,” she continued, “that dad took an interest in. He had been born blind. Nobody thought he could be cured except a famous oculist in Lausanne that dad wrote to about him. He thought there was just a chance. My mother and I were going to Switzerland for a holiday and we took him with us. He was a dear, merry little chap in spite of it. The specialist examined him and then shook his head. ‘I can cure him,’ he said, ‘but it will come again very soon.’ He thought it would be kinder to leave him to his blindness. But my mother urged him and he yielded. “It was wonderful to look into his eyes when he could see. We had warned him that it might be only for a time, and he understood. One night I heard a sound in his room and went in. He had crept out of bed and was sitting on the dressing-table in front of the window with his hands clasped round his knees. ‘I want to remember it,’ he whispered. “You may be right,” she said. “It may bring him sorrow, this love. But, even so, I would not save him from it if I could.” She knelt and took the older woman’s hands in hers. “We must not stand in his way, you and I,” she said. “If it were only his happiness and prosperity we had to think of we might be justified. But it might be his soul we were hurting.” The woman had grown calm. “And you,” she asked, “what will you do?” Betty smiled. “Oh, nothing very heroic!” she answered. “I shall have dad to look after for years to come. We shall travel. I’m fond of travelling. And afterwards--oh! there are heaps of things I want to do that will interest me and keep me busy.”