I should never have thought of it again, probably, but for Harriet herself, for now that the magic string had been touched, her heart overflowed to its echoes, and my waking hours were filled with anecdotes touching, brutal or humourous, of her years of joy and labour. Her cottage rent had cost her forty dollars, her clothes nothing, her food had come largely from the grateful people. Over and over again she returned to her ridiculously pitiful calculations. She could live for one hundred dollars a year. She could have the use of a deserted schoolhouse, free. Two hundred dollars would fit up a tiny hospital and lending-closet, with linen, rubber articles, simple sick-room conveniences. If she had five hundred, she would start on that and trust to getting help to go on with. She could stay there a year, then nurse for a year, and go back with the money she had saved. And so on, and so on, and so on! The floods of North Carolina needs that swept over my helpless head would have drowned a stronger brain than mine. In vain I tried to dam this tide of confidences and hopes and ha'penny economies: it was useless. After a week, during which actual photographs, hideous blue prints, the first advance guard of that flood of amateur photography destined to wash over the world, were brought out for my edification, I rebelled and declared myself cured. "And to get rid of you," I added crossly, "I am going to give you this," and I handed her her weekly cheque, plus a draft for a hundred pounds. "Take it, and get off to those benighted natives, for heaven's sake!" She stared at it, at me, at it again, then choked and fled to her room. I felt like a fool. Later, when I saw what it really meant to the absurd creature, I surreptitiously copied bits of the sordid little diary, and sent them to Roger with a slight account of her, and suggested that he mention this matter to Sarah (who had recently washed her hands of the American negro on the occasion of his having bitterly disappointed her hopes in a brutal race riot) and give that philanthropist's energies a new direction. I saw Harriet off to her boat, tried in vain to get a half hour of rational conversation on topics unrelated to the western mountains of North Carolina, agreed hastily to all directions as to my health, held Kitch up to be kissed, and went back to my sunny garden-corner, for it was full May now, and my strength was growing with the flowers.