How much she knows—much more than I dream, perhaps! I wonder about it, but I never ask her. Both Frank and I have tried to talk to her, but we cannot; it is cowardly, pitiful, perhaps—but we cannot! She used to ask questions in the beginning, but she must have felt our pain, for she asks no more; she simply haunts our home, the incarnation of the tragedy. So much of her mother she has—the wonderful red-brown eyes, the golden hair, the mobile, delicate features. But the sparkle of the eyes and the glow in the cheeks, the gaiety, the rapture—where are they? When I think of this, I clutch my hands in a sort of spasm, and go to my work again. Or perhaps I go into Frank’s den and see him sitting there, with his haggard, brooding face, his hair that turned gray in one week. He never asks the question, but I see it in his eyes: “How much have you done to-day?” A cruel taskmaster is that face of Frank’s! He is haunted by the thought that I may not live to finish the story. The hardest thing of all will be to make you see Sylvia as she was in that wild, wonderful youth of hers, when she was the belle of her state, when the suitors crowded about her like moths about a candle-flame. How shall one who is old and full of bitter memories bring back the magic spirit of youth, the glamor and the glow of it, the terrifying blindness, the torrent-like rush, the sheer, quivering ecstasy of it? What words shall I choose to bring before you the joyfulness of Sylvia? When I first met her she was twenty-six, and had known the kind of sorrow that eats into a woman’s soul as acid might eat into her eyes; and yet you would think she had never been touched by pain—she moved through life, serene, unflinching, a lamp of cheerfulness to every soul who knew her. I met her and proceeded to fall in love with her like the veriest schoolgirl; I would go away and think of her, and clasp my hands together in delight. There was one word that kept coming to me; I would repeat it over and over again—“Happy! Happy! Happy!” She was the happiest soul that I have ever known upon the earth; a veritable fountain of joy. I say that much; and then I hasten to correct it. It seems to be easy for some people to smile. There comes to me another word that I used to find myself repeating about Sylvia. She was wise! She was wise! She was wise with a strange, uncanny wisdom, the wisdom of ages upon ages of womanhood—women who have been mothers and counselors and homekeepers, but above all, women who have been managers of men! Oh, what a manager of men was Sylvia! For the most part, she told me, she managed them for their own good; but now and then the irresistible imp of mischievousness broke loose in her, and then she managed them any way at all, so long as she managed them!