But ah, Shirley sweet, I think the dearest things of you! There isn’t an hour, it seems, but some little bit of you comes back--a dear, sweet bit--the night we sat on the grass in Tregore Park and counted the stars through the trees; that first evening at Sparrows Point when we missed the last train and had to walk to Langley. Remember the tree-toads, Shirl? And then that warm April Sunday in Atholby woods! Ah, Shirl, you don’t want the six notes! Let me keep them. But think of me, will you, sweet, wherever you go and whatever you do? I’ll always think of you, and wish that you had met a better, saner man than me, and that I really could have married you and been all you wanted me to be. By-by, sweet. I may start for Java within the month. If so, and you would want them, I’ll send you some cards from there--if they have any. Your worthless, ARTHUR. She sat and turned the letter in her hand, dumb with despair. It was the very last letter she would ever get from him. Of that she was certain. He was gone now, once and for all. She had written him only once, not making an open plea but asking him to return her letters, and then there had come this tender but evasive reply, saying nothing of a possible return but desiring to keep her letters for old times’ sake--the happy hours they had spent together. The happy hours! Oh, yes, yes, yes--the happy hours! In her memory now, as she sat here in her home after the day’s work, meditating on all that had been in the few short months since he had come and gone, was a world of color and light--a color and a light so transfiguring as to seem celestial, but now, alas, wholly dissipated. It had contained so much of all she had desired--love, romance, amusement, laughter. He had been so gay and thoughtless, or headstrong, so youthfully romantic, and with such a love of play and change and to be saying and doing anything and everything. Arthur could dance in a gay way, whistle, sing after a fashion, play. He could play cards and do tricks, and he had such a superior air, so genial and brisk, with a kind of innate courtesy in it and yet an intolerance for slowness and stodginess or anything dull or dingy, such as characterized---- But here her thoughts fled from him. She refused to think of any one but Arthur.