complete life of joy already." And then he added--if only the adding of
it could have made it come true: "But we have fifty years yet of love."

Oh, it was so true that we packed into ten years the happiness that
could normally be considered to last a lifetime--a long lifetime.
Sometimes it seems almost as if we must have guessed it was to end so
soon, and lived so as to crowd in all the joy we could while our time
together was given us. I say so often that I stand right now the richest
woman in the world--why talk of sympathy? I have our three precious,
marvelously healthy children, I have perfect health myself, I have all
and more than I can handle of big ambitious maturing plans, with a
chance to see them carried out, I have enough to live on, and, greatest
of all, fifteen years of perfect memories--And yet, to hear a snatch of
a tune and know that the last time you heard it you were
together--perhaps it was the very music they played as you left the
theatre arm-in-arm that last night; to put on a dress you have not worn
for some time and remember that, when you last had it on, it was the
night you went, just the two of you, to Blanc's for dinner; to meet
unexpectedly some friend, and recall that the last time you saw him it
was that night you two, strolling with hands clasped, met him on Second
Avenue accidentally, and chatted on the corner; to come across
a necktie in a trunk, to read a book he had marked, to see his
handwriting--perhaps just the address on an old baggage-check--Oh, one
can sound so much braver than one feels! And then, because you have
tried so hard to live up to the pride and faith he had in you, to be
told: "You know I am surprised that you haven't taken Carl's death
harder. You seem to be just the same exactly."

What is _seeming_? Time and time again, these months, I have thought,
what do any of us know about what another person _feels_? A smile--a