All this time I have boosted myself up by saying, "Don't break down yet, wait for something worse." If you wait for real trouble--then you are so busy, you have no time to worry. My religion has in one night become vitally subjective. I know--because when I reason about it, I marvel at my own calm. Shall it be with me as it was with Elsie Hodge, the Bryn Mawr girl who was killed in the Boxer uprising? All day I have been thinking about her. I am writing this and shall leave it here--in case. I cannot write the words needed to describe the fate of women in my condition at the hands of these fiends. Maybe some day I can tell you. * * * * * Sitting on the floor in Mary Roger's room, writing with my paper on my knee. When I left our room, I went to Herbert's wardrobe and put his overcoat on. In one pocket I stuffed Educator crackers out of the box you sent. Some fell on the floor and I left them there. A wee knitted hug-me-tight went into another, and into a third pocket I put the silk American flag Clement gave me when I was married. Miss Talbot is lying down on a cot in our study. Being a Britisher, she is able to sleep. Before I left her in the study, I got out the filing case containing Herbert's thesis. I put it down by the door here in Mary's room, right close to my feet. Then I lay down on the floor with my bundle as a pillow. * * * * * We, from our darkened room where that blessed baby Rogers is sleeping quietly, have been looking out of the window. Two or three Turks pushed a pump affair up in front of a house near by. "Humanity is not dead yet!" I thought, "they are going to try to limit the fire." The water streamed from the hose and it was kerosene. They soaked the roof. Little fingers of flame began waving in the wind. Heavy black smoke is hanging over the town. We can feel the hot air and smell the oil--like a gigantic smoking lamp. Sparks fell on the windowsill just now as I stood there. I patted them with my hands and put them out, but not before they burned little holes in the wood. We closed the blinds and sat down cross-legged on the floor and talked quietly. About being widows. The boys must soon come back to us--either that, or they are dead. We wondered which one of us was a widow. Perhaps both. Once Mary asked me: "Brownie, what are you praying for?" "Goodness, Mary, I don't know what I am praying for. Guess I have just got to live with my soul opened toward Heaven." A little later Mary spoke again, this time cheerfully, for she had thought of something: "I know, let's pray for the wind to change."