"Here a dainty school-girl's letter Still retains its faint perfume, But the little hand that wrote it Molders in a foreign tomb. Close beside it lies another In an awkward, girlish hand, Desperately sentimental-- Ah! I now can understand Just how silly two such lovers As we were then must have been-- She about a year my junior, I a youngster just nineteen!" Teddy unlocked a drawer of his desk and brought out a miscellaneous pile of letters, photographs, faded flowers, and locks of hair of every shade known to woman's head. I am ashamed to record it of Kathleen's prospective bridegroom that he cast glances of unfeigned regret at these treasures as he prepared to devote them to the flames--a sacrifice on the altar of his love for Kathleen. How he lingered over those pretty photographs!--over Rose, the beautiful actress, in the dress she had worn as Iza in "The Clemenceau Case." "Ah, Rose was a model girl!" he laughed, as he laid it down and turned to stately Laura in the two-thousand-dollar gown, the very envy of all her feminine friends when she wore it to Madame Frivolity's ball. Next to it was Gussie, with her sweet and serious face, the dark curls lying softly against her temples, the dimpled white shoulders peeping above the little sleeves of that simple white lace dress in which Teddy had liked her best. He gazed long and earnestly at the girlish face, and a memory came to him of that moonlight evening in the vine-covered arbor when Gussie's arms had clung about his neck, drawing his dark, handsome face down close to hers while the blue-gray eyes gazed tenderly into his dark ones as she whispered, in answer to his question, "My dear old Dark Eyes, I love _you_!" "Upon my soul, I believe that flirtation hit me hard! She was the sweetest of them all, and I was almost sorry I let her marry Bob. Ah, well, Gussie, dear, I too shall be married soon, and these bitter-sweet memories of ours must be tossed into the rag-bag of the past!" He sorted out _her_ letters, and placed them with her picture in a secret drawer, for he had a lingering fondness for his old sweetheart, pretty Gussie, the famous novelist. "I will just keep these," he said. "I don't believe Kathleen would care, for she reads and loves Gussie's novels. And if anything should happen that I do not marry Kathleen--and it was strange the way she acted about Chainey--I should like to know I have these still." He gathered all his mementoes and, with a genuine sigh, flung them upon the glowing blaze. "It is but just to Kathleen," he said, trying to stifle his regret. "Back the mists of years are rolling As these relics of the past, With a wondrous fascination, Have their spells around me cast. Crowds of tender recollections Fill my eyes with unshed tears; Dimmer grows the glowing future-- Dimmer till it disappears."