"Who on earth cares for anything but money?" That she very properly ignores and in a softer, more serious tone, she murmurs: "I came across a little rhyme of Goethe’s—’_Kophtisches Lied_.’ Do you remember it?—’Upon Fortune’s great scale the index never rests. You must either rise or sink, rule and win, or serve and lose; suffer or triumph, be anvil or hammer.’ Isn’t it lovely?" "Yes. Did you translate that in your head as you went along?" I ask. "Yes, Uncle Ranny—and you have triumphed over Goethe’s wisdom. You have always triumphed even when you suffered—you have always been you, through all your troubles—Salmon and Byrd—Visconti’s. You don’t know how I, too, lived through all those things—even when I was a child and hardly dared to speak to you—I was, oh, so anxious—and so glad when you seemed to be happy. And even now—oh, it’s been so wonderful to watch you!" The tears fill her eyes and she turns her face from me. "That’s been my life." "You little witch!" my heart cries out dumbly, in a very ache of tenderness. "And have you been mothering me in your thoughts all these years as you have mothered the children?" "No, Alicia—I haven’t triumphed," I whisper huskily. "But I am triumphing now." She turns toward me again with a smile of misty radiance. By an effort I control my voice and launch out briskly: "Did I ever tell you, Alicia, how I nearly owned the priceless copy of his Essays that Bacon inscribed and gave to Shakespeare?" I am well again—and therefore solitary. It is little enough I have seen of my nephew Randolph during my illness and little that Alicia has seen of her fiancé. This being a Saturday when Randolph is at home, Alicia stopped him as he was about to leave the house to go to New York, "on business," as my "conditioned" Sophomore put it, and firmly proposed a walk with her instead. He demurred, the egregious whelp, demurred to a walk with Alicia! I surprised a note that was almost pleading beneath the bright decision—Alicia pleading to be taken for a walk! I could have trounced the boy in my hot indignation. They departed—I saw them depart. They were in the obscure little hall and my door was open. Alicia waved her hand, smiling. "Just a wee bit walk!" she called out in Griselda’s language. She could not have known the tug of longing and envy with which my heart and spirit followed her as my body felt suddenly and disconsolately heavy against the chair. "Have a good time," I waved my hand back, "and greet the spring for me!" The birds are reappearing and an enterprising family of wrens are already building urgently over my window. Robins are courting and strutting. The trees are tender with leaf and the throb of spring is in the air like a mighty force, ceaseless, slow, careless, yet all-penetrating. The morning sun was bathing all the world in the very elixir of youth. A fly was buzzing madly against the pane. I felt intensely solitary, poignantly alone.