I loved my dreams, but alas, they were not enough. After a tortured hour or two at my desk, living in myself the agonies of my characters, suffering the pangs of the wife with two husbands and both living, struggling in the water with the children, fruit of the first union, dying with number two and blowing my last bubbles heavenward--after all these emotions, I was done out. Jane came in one day and found me prostrate on my couch, with a light of suffering in my eyes. "Dearest!" cried Jane, and gliding to my side, fell on her knees. "Jane!" "What is it? You are ill?" I could hardly more than whisper. In a low tone I said: "He is dead." "Dearest!" "Drowned!" At first she thought I meant a member of my family. But when she understood she looked serious. "You are too intense, Bab," she said solemnly. "You suffer too much. You are wearing yourself out." "There is no other way," I replied in broken tones. Jane went to the Mirror and looked at herself. Then she turned to me. "Others don't do it." "I must work out my own Salvation, Jane," I observed firmly. But she had roused me from my apathy, and I went into Sis's room, returning with a box of candy some one had sent her. "I must feel, Jane, or I cannot write." "Pooh! Loads of writers get fat on it. Why don't you try comedy? It pays well." "Oh--MONEY!" I said, in a disgusted tone. "Your FORTE, of course, is love," she said. "Probably that's because you've had so much experience." Owing to certain reasons it is generally supposed that I have experienced the gentle passion. But not so, alas! "Bab," Jane said, suddenly, "I have been your friend for a long time. I have never betrayed you. You can trust me with your life. Why don't you tell me?" "Tell you what?" "Something has happened. I see it in your eyes. No girl who is happy and has not a tragic story stays at home shut up at a messy desk when everyone is out at the club playing tennis. Don't talk to me about a career. A girl's career is a man and nothing else. And especially after last winter, Bab. Is--is it the same one?" Here I made my fatal error. I should have said at once that there was no one, just as there had been no one last winter. But she looked so intense, sitting there, and after all, why should I not have an amorous experience? I am not ugly, and can dance well, although inclined to lead because of dancing with other girls all winter at school. So I lay back on my pillow and stared at the ceiling. "No. It is not the same man." "What is he like? Bab, I'm so excited I can't sit still." "It--it hurts to talk about him," I observed faintly.