“And one of the first things he asked me when he heard Tom came from near Valdivia, was all about you—I mean your father. He says such beautiful things about your father, and how kind he was when Jack was a poor, forlorn, little boy. But oh, Hildegarde! he’s the most glorious person now you ever saw in your life. The old faded photograph isn’t a bit like him. I am sending you a new one, and that isn’t like him, either. But I am going to get a silver frame for it and I shall be dreadfully hurt if you don’t put it on the altar-table, with the old locket and the roses—if you’re really glad of our happiness you’ll even burn a joss now and then for our sake. I’m miserable when I think how little good any photograph of such a person is! You can’t imagine what it’s like when he smiles. All the whole earth smiles, too. I adore him when he smiles—and when he doesn’t. I adore him every minute, except when he talks about Franz Josef Land, or something disgusting like that. But then he doesn’t do it much—never, except when Mr. Borisoff is here. Mr. Borisoff is a man I can’t stop to tell you about, only I don’t like him, and I shall let Jack know some day that I don’t think he is a good influence. “But I began to say that you mustn’t think Jack is the least solemn as his letters used to sound and as the pictures make out. In fact, he began our acquaintance by flirting quite desperately, but he says it wasn’t flirting at all. He meant all those things! He says they were a profession of faith upon a miraculous revelation (that’s me—I’m the miraculous revelation!), and it only sounded flirtatious because I didn’t realize, as he did, that we had been waiting for one another.