And that is your chief glory to me. In those seven years of closest companionship, and in these last three years of lesser intercourse but far keener observation, I have never known you to do a mean thing or to speak a mean thought. I almost feel it treason to couple the word with you, or deny a trait so impossible for you to possess, and of which you have always shown such scorn and hatred. At this moment I know that I should only have to speak to part you forever from—Ah, what foolishness I am writing, tempting me to even greater meanness than his, and so to deserve the greater contempt from you! Thinking me base, you closed your doors to me three years ago, and I love you the better that not even for auld lang syne could you pardon what is so alien to you. If the day ever comes when you again admit me to your friendship, I shall be happy in knowing that you think me above baseness or meanness; for you would not compound with them, Maizie, be the circumstances what they might. Our Paris life would not have been so happy and careless but for the slight part my mother had in it. So little did we see of her in those years that I think of her scarcely as one of us. I remember dimly a scene of hot anger between her and my father,—he standing passively by the high porcelain stove, while she raged about the room. So great was her fury that once, in passing, as I crouched scared and silent on the sofa, she struck me,—a blow which brought my father to my side, where he stood protectingly while the storm lasted, with his hand resting lovingly on my shoulder. My vague impression is that the outburst was only a protest against the poor lodgings, but it may have occurred when some explanation took place between my parents. I can see my mother now, sitting on the little balcony overlooking the garden of our pension, snarling an ill-natured word at us as you and I tried to play consultation games of chess against my father. He gave us odds at first of the rook and two pawns, but finally only of a knight. Oh, the triumph of those victories! How we gloried in them, and how delighted our antagonist was when we conquered him! Little we minded what my mother did except when we happened to be alone with her, and I think that the dear father played bad chess with us rather than good at the cafés, and made us his companions wherever he went, to save us from her severity.