The time was shortening; the days were drawing near when she must report for work.... Her last year of work, perhaps.... The last year, maybe, of her screen career. She wrote to the man who already had become the object paramount of her life: “Dearest:-- “Your daily letters reassure me. You do me a great kindness in writing them. Long ago, before I knew what love was, your unvarying kindness won me. Always, to me, it remains the most wonderful thing in the world. “We are not yet in full autumn here at Whitewater Farms. Few leaves have turned. Except for miles of golden-rod and purple asters on fallow and roadside, and acres of golden stubble, and the wine-red acres of reaped buckwheat, one would scarcely believe that summer had ended in these Northern hills. “I went to-day to Whitewater Brook, where I encountered the first person connected with pictures I ever had seen. You will laugh. It was poor old Quiss. “He was fishing. He didn’t possess much skill. He called me ‘sister’ and ‘girlie.’ “I clung to him as a cat clings to a back fence. I pleaded, I implored for his aid and advice. “Poor old fellow, I always shall be grateful. I met Frank Donnell through him--dearest of my friends excepting you, Barry. “Well, then, I walked along the brook and sentimentalised in the dappled sunlight of the yellowing woods. The blue-jays were like winged sapphires everywhere; squirrels made a most prodigious noise among dry leaves. In a hemlock I saw a large owl sitting. “I took home a huge sheaf of asters. Even in my arms butterflies hovered about the gold and blue blossoms. * * * * * “I shall leave here soon. My stepmother and my half-brothers are kind to me. My father, too, in his own way. “But I shall not come to Whitewater Farms again. “In spite of kindness, I am not wanted. Finally, I have come to understand that. “I am not really welcome; I am pleasantly endured. My people have nothing in common with me. It always has been so. I seem to have been born an outsider. I still am. They can’t help it; nor can I. There seems to be no bond, no tie, no natural obligation of blood, none of custom, to hold me here.... It is a lonely feeling. But it has been mine from earliest recollection. “Often I used to wonder why I had no intimate affection for this house, for the place--trees, hills, woods. “I love them--but as one who passes that way often, and becomes fond of a neighbour’s house and trees. “Never have they, in any intimate sense, been mine, or part of me.... Not even my old dresses, my few books, my fewer child’s toys, have I ever truly considered mine--lacking, perhaps, the love that should have been the gift,--the spirit, Barry--which left me only with the substance--a lonely, lonely child.