The letter came as she was leaving the house for a walk in the Park. There was no great distance to go before you came to an entrance, and she often went alone and wandered here and there by herself. The country was in her veins; not to see trees and grass very often was very bad. She opened the letter, saw what it was, then walked on in a rosy mist. After a while, out under the branched grey trees, she found a bench, sat down, and read it again and yet again. Her soul passioned to do this thing; to write, to write well, to give out wonderfully, beautifully. A letter that told her it was so, that she was doing that which, with the strongest longing, she longed to do, must be to her golden as a love letter. With it open on her lap, with her eyes on the serene, pearl-grey meadow on the edge of which she sat, she stayed a long time, dreaming. A young man and woman, lovers evidently, slowly passed her bench beneath the trees. She watched them with tranquil eyes. "They're lovers," and she felt a reflex of their bliss. They passed, and she watched as happily the grey spaces where a few sheep stirred, and the edge of trees beyond, dream trees in the mist. Quite simply she fell to thinking of "the boy." He had been often in her mind since the evening of that meeting; she wondered about him a good deal. She did not know his name; she had no idea where he lived; he might be in New York now, or he might not be; she might pass him in the street and not know--though, indeed, now she kept a lookout. He did not know her name; she was to him "the little girl" as he was to her "the boy." They might never meet again, but she had a faith that it would not be so. What she felt toward him was but friendliness, concern, and some admiration; but the feeling had a soft glow and pulse. The most marked thing was the consciousness that she knew him truly; reasoning did not come into it; she could have told herself a dozen times how little she did know, and it would have made no difference. It was as though the boy and she had seen each other's essential self through a clear pane of glass. Her mind did not dwell long upon him to-day. She sat with her hands crossed above the letter, and her eyes, half-veiled, upon the far horizon. To write--to write--to produce, to lead forth, to give birth, to push out and farther on forever, to make a beautiful thing, and always a more beautiful thing--always--always.... She was more mind than body as she sat there; she saw her thought-children going up to heaven before her.