And then after Byram had come Newton, big, successful, important, a quondam employer of Byram, who had met her on the street one day when she was looking for work, just when she had begun to sense how inefficient Byram really was, and he had proved kind without becoming obnoxious or demanding. While declaring, and actually proving, that he wished nothing more of her than her good-will, he had aided her with work, an opportunity to make her own way. All men were not selfish. He had been the vice-president of the Dickerson Company and had made a place for her in his office, saying that what she did not know he would teach her since he needed a little sunshine there. And all the while her interest in Byram was waning, so much so that she had persuaded him to seek work elsewhere so that she might be rid of him, and then she had gone home to live with her mother. And Newton would have married her if she had cared, but so grieved was she by the outcome of her first love and marriage that she would not. “_The sedan, yes. And I will take my furs._” And then, living with her mother and making her own way, she had been sought by others. But there had been taking root and growing in her an ideal which somehow in the course of time had completely mastered her and would not even let her think of anything else, save in moments of loneliness and the natural human yearning for life. This somehow concerned some one man, not any one she knew, not any one she was sure she would ever meet, but one so wonderful and ideal that for her there could be no other like him. He was not to be as young or unsophisticated as Byram, nor as old and practical as Newton, though possibly as able (though somehow this did not matter), but wise and delicate, a spirit-mate, some such wondrous thing as a great musician or artist might be, yet to whom in spite of his greatness she was to be all in all. She could not have told herself then how she was to have appealed to him, unless somehow surely, because of her great desire for him, her beauty and his understanding of her need. He was to have a fineness of mind and body, a breadth, a grasp, a tenderness of soul such as she had not seen except in pictures and dreams. And such as would need her. “_To Thorne and Company’s first, Fred._”