of the inexorable things that come to people in this world--I
could talk about. That deeper hurt, which has put a scar that
never will be effaced on my soul, of course I could not tell him
about. But when we went back to the car he said to me that he
would help me to get back into the sunlight. He said the first
thing I must do to regain self-confidence was to begin driving
again. I told him I could not, but he said I must, and made me
take the driver's seat of a car I had never seen and take the
steering wheel of a make of machine I had never driven, and
tackle two or three serious problems for a driver. I did it all
right, Linda, because I couldn't allow myself to fail the kind of
a man Mr. Snow is, when he was truly trying to help me, but in
the depths of my heart I am afraid I am a coward forever, for
there is a ghastly illness takes possession of me as I write
these details to you. But anyway, put a red mark on your
calendar beside the date on which you get this letter, and
joyfully say to yourself that Marian has found two real,
sympathetic friends.

In a week or ten days I shall know about the contest. If 1:
win, as I really have a sneaking hope that I shall, since I have
condensed the best of two dozen houses into one and exhausted my
imagination on my dream home, I will surely telegraph, and you
can make it a day of jubilee. If I fail, I will try to find out
where my dream was not true and what can be done to make it
materialize properly; but between us, Linda girl, I am going to
be dreadfully disappointed. I could use the material value that
prize represents. I could start my life work which I hope to do
in Lilac Valley on the prestige and the background that it would
give me. I don't know, Linda, whether you ever learned to pray