... “You asked me to be your friend, you said I could help you, and now I ask you to be my friend, to come here to this great city where I must be for a time and help me. I felt brave and strong at first, I was not afraid to be rich, but I begin to tremble now, to feel strangely weak and girlish and unprotected; to feel, in short, that I need a friend, that I need what I think you can be to me. After aunt Madison had been with me only a few days she was obliged to return to Boston, leaving me quite alone. Of course Madam Grundy says that I must have a chaperon, but I do not want a chaperon, and I should be wretched with a ‘companion,’ perfunctorily trying to entertain me, learning all my plans and secrets, and hypocritically assenting to everything I do and say. No; I want an honest friend, one who knows the world as you do, who will honestly speak her mind, who will take an interest in all my schemes, and help to keep me from making blunders. “I believe I could talk more freely, think more clearly, and do better work if you were beside me, your honest eyes looking into mine. For, let me tell you the secret, dear, of what first drew me to you. You are most strangely like the sister whom I lost years ago, and whose companionship, if she had lived, would have made life so rich for me. I feel myself so alone; never before have I had so keen a sense of loneliness as now, here, in this modern Babylon, with my old life and work abandoned, and the new perplexing life which my wealth has brought me just begun. Like me, you are alone in the world, singularly alone; so come and be to me what my little Ruby would have been. When you speak I could almost believe that I hear her voice; when you look at me I see her eyes again. Your face haunts me. Come to me and I shall feel that my Ruby is with me again.” Standing in the sunshine beneath the old elms I read these loving words. When I lifted my eyes again, the beautiful quaint old street was suddenly transfigured. For months it had been to me but a bare prison-house; now the sunshine was real sunshine, the sky was no longer leaden, the world was, after all, a beautiful world, and I was glad to live. So bidding farewell to quiet Chestnut Street and the staid, historic old city, I went to the “modern Babylon” to meet Mildred, and the new life began. As the days went on I perceived that she seemed to have a feverish dread that she should die with her work undone. My constant anxiety was that she would succumb to the fearful nervous strain which her sudden accession to wealth and responsibility had brought upon her. But nothing seemed to rest her or relieve her mind except the accomplishment of some of the ends she had in view, and as every new project was consummated, she showed a relief and delight that to the average society woman would have appeared inexplicable and at the same time amusing.