He had written to Howard and some others, and commenced, at last, a letter to Mary Carton. It lay unfinished on his desk; a thin coating of dust was gathering upon it. Mrs. Leland called continually on Mrs. Sherman. She sentimentalized over the lovers, and even wept over them; each visit supplied the household with conversation for a week. Every Sunday morning—his letter-writing time—Sherman looked at his uncompleted letter. Gradually it became plain to him he could not finish it. It had never seemed to him he had more than friendship for Mary Carton, yet somehow it was not possible to tell her of this love-affair. The more his betrothed troubled him the more he thought about the unfinished letter. He was a man standing at the cross-roads. Whenever the wind blew from the south he remembered his friend, for that is the wind that fills the heart with memory. One Sunday he removed the dust from the face of the letter almost reverently, as though it were the dust from the wheels of destiny. But the letter remained unfinished. IX. One Wednesday in June Sherman arrived home an hour earlier than usual from his office, as his wont was the first Wednesday in every month, on which day his mother was at home to her friends. They had not many callers. To-day there was no one as yet but a badly-dressed old lady his mother had picked up he knew not where. She had been looking at his photograph album, and recalling names and dates from her own prosperous times. As she went out Miss Leland came in. She gave the old lady in passing a critical look that made the poor creature very conscious of a threadbare mantle, and went over to Mrs. Sherman, holding out both hands. Sherman, who knew all his mother’s peculiarities, noticed on her side a slight coldness; perhaps she did not altogether like this beautiful dragon-fly. “I have come,” said Miss Leland, “to tell John that he must learn to paint. Music and society are not enough. There is nothing like art to give refinement.” Then turning to John Sherman—“My dear, I will make you quite different. You are a dreadful barbarian, you know.” “What ails me, Margaret?” “Just look at that necktie! Nothing shows a man’s cultivation like his necktie. Then your reading! You never read anything but old books nobody wants to talk about. I will lend you three every one has read this month. You really must acquire small talk and change your necktie.” Presently she noticed the photograph-book lying open on a chair. “Oh!” she cried, “I must have another look at John’s beauties.” It was a habit of his to gather all manner of pretty faces. It came from incipient old bachelorhood, perhaps.