was a woman unique in her generation. So strong was her individuality
that I was forced to appreciate it, even in the days when I used
to make her life a burden by planting her silver spoons in the
rose-garden and re-setting her favorite cuttings wrong side up. I wish
she had lived longer; it would have been both a pleasure and a profit
to have studied and analyzed her. And how I should like to know her
history! That she had one there is no doubt. The lines of repression
in her face were the strongest I have ever seen, to say nothing of
the night I found her standing over the Byzantine chest with her hands
full of yellow papers. There were no lines of repression in her face
just then; she looked fairly murderous. She did not see me, and I left
with a brevity worthy of its cause. I should like to know who wrote
those letters. I looked for them after her death, but she had either
destroyed them or else that old Byzantine chest has a secret drawer.
If it has I'll discover it some day when time hangs heavily.

"No," he continued, settling himself down more comfortably among his
pillows, and tossing the end of his cigar into the grate, "I shall
marry some day, undoubtedly, but I must find a woman with the brains
and charm of my grandmother. This girl, they say, is brilliant, and
certainly she cut me up sharply enough to-night; but she would
be altogether too much to handle for a lifetime. It would be very
pleasant for a time, but a deuced bore later on. What a beauty she is,
though! I cannot get her out of my mind. She has been posing before my
mental vision all the time I have been trying to think about something
else. Those eyes--gods! And what a figure! What--"

With a nervous, precipitate motion, he rose to his feet and drew in
his breath, as if to throw a sudden load from his chest. He stood
irresolute for a moment, then revolving slowly on his heel, walked, as