wrote to Edith Campbell and told her I was ready to be friends. For suddenly, brought face to face with the thrilling image of the man of my dreams, I was ready to live with twenty Edith Campbells. Of course, of course, I couldn't marry Dr. Maynard, and with a little pang of regret or something like it in my heart, I finally wrote him this note:
"Dear Dr. Maynard,
The refugee has thought it all over very carefully and has decided to gather the pieces of her house together and rebuild on the same spot, like San Francisco."
Then I added, dropping all play and with something I knew to be pain:
"I can't do it, Dr. Maynard, I've tried and I can't. But you'll always be the very kindest man I know.
"Now if you don't come!" I said to the picture, and leaned forward and buried my head in my arms.
So that is how it happened that Dr. Maynard went away to Germany alone and I remained at home to fight my battle. It was a dull, grey morning that he sailed, some three weeks after that wakeful night of mine, and I was sitting alone in my room at precisely eleven o'clock—the sailing hour—trying to imagine Dr. Maynard down there in New York on the big, white-decked liner, waving good-bye in his Oxford grey overcoat.
I was wondering if the nicest, cheerfullest steamer letter I could write had reached him when suddenly Mary, the general-housework girl, pushed
