"Some day, Dorry, things may be different again. Some day, if we both live and you are still free, and still care, I may come to you and ask you to give me back your promise. For you are free now, Dorry. I would be less than I am if I did not give you your freedom now, after holding out to you all the promises of wealth, and leading you to believe in all my vain dreams. How beautiful you were through it all! You only thought of others. Dear heart, what will the poor poets and artists do now without the beautiful place you were going to build for them? I suppose they must always be poor dreamers like me to the end, and it is that poverty and that end, darling, that I cannot ask you to share. "Good-by, Dorry. We have been friends from childhood, and friends we must still, be, for, whatever comes, I am always "Your faithful "TRUE." "P.S. I believe I wrote you that your Christmas remembrance came. I thank you for it once more. It is very beautiful. I thought you might care for the book because it is an autograph copy. I must not forget to wish you a happy and beautiful New Year. It will be different from what we had planned--different from the year just passed, which, I suppose, has been happy, too, though I would not, for some reasons, wish to repeat it. I forgot to tell you about my picture. I am only waiting for a cold sleet to come, so I can finish it. I had intended it, you know, for Perny's Christmas, to hang over his desk in the new house; but there is no new house, and he would not let me give it to him now, so I shall try to sell it. "TRUE." XX THE BARK OF THE WOLF In the studios near Union Square, where two artists and a writer lived and toiled together, there was an atmosphere of heavy gloom. It was a bitter, dark day without, for one thing, raw and windy, while within there was little in the way of cheerfulness besides the open fire, which, for economy's sake, was not allowed to manifest any undue spirit of enterprise. Being the last day in the year--a year that had not been overkind to them--also added something to the feeling of pervading melancholy, and the fact that no one of the three had eaten since the previous evening was not conducive to joy. They were not altogether without hope. They had tobacco, such as it was, and coal for the time being. Food was more or less of a luxury compared with these. They had scraped together their last fractional funds and invested them in necessaries. Then, too, there was to be more money; not much, of course,--there was not much money anywhere now,--but enough to satisfy for a time the gaunt wolf that was marching up and down in the hall outside, pausing now and then to grin up at the spot where the sign of the "Whole Family" had hung, and show his gleaming white teeth. It was Van Dorn who had pictured the situation in this manner, and added: