Aunt Cordelia was hoping that she would make a splendid match. Within a week after John Grant had said good-by she had rejected Reggie Eames, whom her aunt had been encouraging for a year or two. She liked Reggie well enough; he was a good fellow. When he had asked her if there was another suitor standing in his way, she had looked him in the face and told him that there was; and Reggie had taken it like a man, and had made a point of being nice to her ever since, whenever they met in society. As she stood there at the window she gave a slight start and nodded pleasantly to Reggie, who had bowed as he passed the house on the way to the Union Club. And then the avenue, with all its passers-by, its carriages and automobiles, its shoveling laborers and its falling snow, its Christmas greens and its lighted windows, faded again from her vision, as she tried to imagine that unseen grave far away in Panama. She wished that she could have been with him--that they could have had those last few hours together. She had had so little of him, after all. An unexpected summons had come to him less than a week after they were engaged; and he had gone at once. Of course, he had written by every steamer, but what were letters when she was longing for the clasp of his arms? And every month, on the twenty-second, there had come a bunch of violets, with the single word "Sweetheart." He had laughed when he told her that the twenty-second of December was the shortest day in the year--which was not very promising if they expected to be "as happy as the day is long"! The months had gone, one after another; she had not seen him again; and now she would never see him again. He had been hoping for leave of absence early in the spring; and she had been looking forward to it. He had written that he did not know how the work would get along without him, but he did know that he could not get along without her. Hereafter she would have to get along without him; and she had never longed for him so much, wanted him, needed him. The long years to come stretched out before her vision, as she stood there in the window, lovely in her youthful beauty; and she knew that for her they would be desolate, barren, and empty years. The flame of love burned within her as fiercely as ever; but there was now nothing for it to feed on but a memory; yet the fire was hot in its ashes. She opened her heavy furs, for she felt as if they were stifling her. She knew that they had been admired by her friends, and even envied by some of them. Aunt Cordelia had given them to her for Christmas, insisting on her wearing them as soon as they came home, since they were so becoming.