Like a dreary desert the long years which must be lived stretched desolately before me, and my only aim was to fill the minutes of each day so full as to leave me no leisure for memory or thought. As I closed my eyes to sleep that night my last thought was, “Yes, I _will_ know her. I _must_ know her. Oh, if I could only be like her, a creature of thought and purpose, absorbed in some idea, caring for something beside my wretched, silly self! Perhaps she can help me. I will ask her. I can trust _her_.” I had been deceived in others; I had given my utmost trust to those who had proved utterly unworthy, and in bitterness of spirit I had resolved never to trust again, never to leave the gateway to my heart unguarded; but now, before I knew it, the locks had yielded, and I stood with lonely, outstretched arms, begging for love to enter in. After all, I was still young, and very, very human. And love came. It came before my fallen pride had found words to ask for it. I had something to live for now. _I had found a friend._ What romance has ever been written that tells of woman’s love for woman? And yet the world is full of it, despite the skeptics, and the Davids and Jonathans find their counterparts in thousands of the unwritten lives of women. Yes, I had found not a new acquaintance, but a warm heart-friend. Thank God that she knew it and I knew it before the wealth which came so fast upon the beginning of our friendship could create a gulf between us, which, once established, my pride would never have allowed me to cross. Mildred knew, she always knew, that I had loved her first, and wanted her for herself alone. I knew, when the wealth came, that it would not make her any the less my friend, but I was only one among her many friends. I knew that our paths would be different now, and though she would always think kindly of me, I could not expect to see and know her as I had fondly dreamed in the first days of our friendship. “No, I can never return to her what she can give, what she has already given to me; my little life can play but a small part in the large life that has come to her,” I said drearily, as I turned back, after the first shock of surprise, to readjust myself to the old routine of thought and feeling, which, I had dared to hope, had been put behind me forever. “Ah, well, I have made believe be happy before, I can do so again,” I said to myself, grimly. But one day—how well I remember it—as I passed down Chestnut Street in Salem noting the brilliant winter sunlight shining down from the cloudless blue through the black lace work of branches high arching overhead, and casting fantastic shadows on the brick walls of the stately old mansions on either side, some one handed me a letter. This is what it said:—