Why I can do naught else but sit here and write of the past I do not understand. Until a month ago I was working every evening till far into the night, but now, try as I may, I can no longer force myself to my task. I should think it was physical exhaustion, were it not that I can chronicle this stale record of what I know so well. I suppose it is mental discouragement at my slight progress in reducing that crushing debt, and, even more, my sadness at the thought of you as his wife. Good-night, my darling. May happiness be yours. XIII _March 4._ My impressions of that first winter in New York are curiously dim except for the extreme loneliness of my life, which, after the close companionship with my father for so many years, seemed at times almost unbearable. Indeed, I doubt if I could have borne the long hours of solitude and toil but for my occasional glimpses of you. I should think myself fatuous in claiming that you influence me physically,—that I am conscious of a material glow, ecstasy, thrill, call it what you please, when with you,—if I had not once heard Agnes declare that she always felt, when you were in the room, as if she had been drinking champagne; showing that I am not the only one you can thus affect. My pleasantest recollection is of our long talk in my employer’s study; and strangely enough, it was my books which gained it for me. Mr. Whitely, when I first came into his service, had just endowed a free library in one of the Western cities where some of his oil interests centred, and I hinted to him the purchase of my books as a further gift to his hobby. The suggestion did not meet with his approval,—I fear because there was not the self-advertising in it that there is in a money gift,—but after a week he told me that he might buy the collection to furnish his editorial study. “I plan,” he said, “to make my office attractive, and then have informal literary receptions once a week. I shall therefore require some books, and as your library should be marked by breadth and depth of learning, I presume it will serve my purpose.” “There are quite a number of Eastern manuscripts of value,” I told him, “and few of the books are in languages that can be read by the average New Yorker.” “That gives the suggestion of scholarship which I wish,” he acknowledged.