Where I sit at my window, sweetheart, I can see the corner of the grape-arbor in your garden. Do you remember the day we sat there, and I read you my story, and you listened, with your great dreaming eyes on the slippery leaf shadows, and your mouth stained with the purple grapes? And when I had finished, you asked me, "Why did Reginald think he had to die, William?" And I told you, "Because he loved Eleanor so much and she loved another man." "Then why didn't he love some one else, too? How silly they all were!" you said. You were too young to understand. I look in the eyes of the little girl in the picture, and she does not understand. The little girl is a year younger than you, and the green-and-white frock in the picture was torn and darned last summer. I remember how you looked, bent over your needle, your red lips a little heavy with unspoken protest as you sewed the long rent. What a child you always were to tear your frocks and get berry stains on your white aprons and scratch your fingers and arms with briers! And how I have loved each scratch and stain. My sweet, wild little Allison! Now perhaps you begin to understand, to wonder and dream a little. You may even have your dreams of lovers. You wonder yet with no intimation behind your clear eyes of what this thing is that incites men to courage or drives them to madness and death. Have you wondered yet if some day it will come to you? Or does it live still in that fair, fragrant world of your imagination as a tale that is told? * * * * * To-day you came home from your sewing circle, where you sewed garments for the soldiers, and when you came away you let me carry your package. The sleeve of your little gray gown had been darned, and you had outgrown the dress. "It isn't pretty any more, but I mustn't have a new one," you said. "It is wicked for us to have new things when the soldiers are ragged and cold." And that look that is like tears came into your eyes. Oh, how I longed to kiss the hand you held out for your bundle at the gate! Not yet, Allison. You are just sixteen. You are a child yet. I must wait. WILLIAM. December, '64.