I shall never forget, not to my dying day, the sight I had of her sitting there; in that room, at that desk, in a black evening gown—_writing_! And the string of pearls she had slung across the condemned gas-jet by way of subtle disarmament for her task! The whole place had the hushed grand air of having been cleared for action by some sophisticated gesture; as if—the thought whimsically struck me—she might have just rung for the “second man” and bidden him remove “all the Pomeranians” lest they distract her. “It’s too lovely, Miss Haviland; I can’t tell you what I think it is,” I exclaimed, blankly. She stood up, reached for the rope of pearls, and slipped them over her head. “I want you to see the hall,” she said. “Isn’t it _chic_?... And the bedrooms. The men will leave their hats in the south chamber—my room—in here; and the women will have the other—this one.” She preceded me. She was quite simple in her eagerness to point out everything she had done. Her childlike glee in it touched me. And she looked so tired. She looked, in spite of her pomp and enthusiasm, exhausted. “How he—how Mr. Hurrell Oaks will love it,” I cried, sincerely. “If he only realized, if he only could know the pains you’ve taken for him.” “_Pains?_” She leaned forward and let me judge for myself how she felt. Her eyes glowed. I had never seen her with all the barriers down. “It isn’t a _crumb_ of what’s due him,” she pleaded. “Do you think I expect he’ll love it? No. It’s only the best I could do—the best I _can_ do—to save him the shock of finding it all awful. Oh, I didn’t, I so don’t want him to think we are—barbarians!” She gave it out to me from the depths of her heart, and I accepted it completely, with no reservations or comments. It was the one real passion of her life, as I’ve said. She was laying bare to me the utmost she had done and longed to do for Hurrell Oaks. “To think that he is coming here!” she murmured. “I’ve waited and hoped so to see him—only to see him—it’s about the most I’ve ever wanted. And it’s going to happen, dear, in my own little rooms. He is coming to me! Oh, you can’t know what he’s meant to me in all the years—how I’ve studied and striven to learn to be worthy of him! _All_—the little all I’ve got—I owe to him—everything. He’s done more than anybody, alive or dead, to teach me to be interested in life—to make me happy.” She threw her long arms around my shoulders and pressed me to her, and kissed me on the forehead. The chapel clock struck ten. “You’ll come, too, won’t you?” she asked, stepping back away from me in sudden cheerfulness. “For I want you to see how wonderful he will be.”