Reaching this point in my narrative I lean back in my chair—the coals are dying down in the fireplace, Harriet long ago went to bed, and the house is silent with a silence that one can hear—I lean back and think again of that moment in Anthy's life.

I have before me an open letter, a letter so often opened and so often folded again that the creases are worn thin. I keep it in the drawer of my desk with a packet labelled, "Archives of the Star." There are several of the old Captain's editorials, including the one entitled "Fudge," and of course the one about Roosevelt, a number of Nort's early manuscripts, Fergus's version of Mark Twain, and five letters in Anthy's firm handwriting.

This is a very curious document, this letter I have before me. The outside of the envelope bears the name of Abraham Lincoln, and the letter itself begins: "Dear Mr. Lincoln." It is in Anthy's hand.

Ever since I began writing this narrative I have been impatient to reach this moment, but now that I am here, I hesitate. It is no common matter to put down the secret imaginings of a woman's soul.

We all lead double lives: that which our friends and neighbours know, and that which is invisible within us. Acquaintance gives us the outward aspects of our neighbours, with friendship we penetrate a little way into the deeper life, but when we love there is no glen too secret for us, no upland too elusive, and we worship at the altars of the eternal woods. Long before I knew Anthy well I knew something of her deeper life, something more than that which looked out of her still eyes or marked her quiet countenance. The quality of Anthy's silences were a sign: and I surprised once the look she had when walking alone in a country road. People who are shallow, or whose inner lives are harassed by forms of fear ("most men," as Thoreau says, "live lives of quiet desperation") rarely care to be silent, rarely wish to be alone with themselves; but it is the sign of a noble nature that it has made terms with itself.

One of the tragedies of life, perhaps the supreme tragedy, is that we should be unable to follow those we love to their serenest heights. I once knew a man who had lived for twenty years with a woman, and never got beyond what he could see with the eyes of the flesh. The gate to the uplands of the soul long stood open to him (and stands open now no more); he passed that way, too, but he never went in.

I do not wish to imply that Anthy was a mere dreamer. She was not, decidedly; but she had, always, her places of retirement. From a child she had friends of her own imagining. The first of them I have already referred to, a certain Richard and Rachel who came out through the wall near the stairway in her father's house, to be the confidants of a lonely child. Others came later as she grew older. I know the names of some of them, and just what they meant to Anthy at particular moments in her life. They came to her, as friends come to us in real life, as we are ripe for them.

It was some time after her father's death, when she felt very much alone, that Anthy wrote her first letter to Mr. Lincoln. Her father had made Lincoln one of the most vivid characters of her girlhood: a portrait of him hung over the mantel in the living-room, and there was another at the office. One day, almost involuntarily, she began a letter:

Once started, she poured out her very heart to Mr. Lincoln: and having completed the letter she folded it, placed it in an envelope, on which she wrote "Abraham Lincoln," and going to the mantel slipped it behind Mr. Lincoln's picture. Then she turned around quickly, looked all about—but there was no one there to see. She told me long afterward that it seemed at first a little absurd to be actually writing letters to Mr. Lincoln, but that it relieved her mind and made her feel more cheerful in her loneliness. After that it became an almost daily practice for her to pour out her thoughts and difficulties to Mr. Lincoln. And the place behind the portrait was the post office. She said that sometimes during the busiest parts of the day the thought would suddenly flash across her mind that she would tell Mr. Lincoln this or that, and it gave her a curious deep sense of comfort. Each evening she destroyed the letter she had written on the day before—destroyed them all, except those which lie here on my desk.

I am sure that this practice meant a great deal in Anthy's life. One cannot know much about any great human being, think what he would do under this or that circumstance, or what he would say if he were here, without coming to be something like him. We are strangely influenced in this world by those whom we admire most. Harriet and I know a little old maid—I have written about her elsewhere—who has thought so much about the Carpenter of Nazareth that she has come to be wonderfully like Him.

It would be impossible for any one to understand Anthy, or, indeed, the life of the Star, or Nort, without knowing of the deep inner forces which were influencing her. I know now why she maintained through all the earlier days, those trying days, the front of quiet courage.

And so I come to the letter open here on my desk. It is the one that Anthy wrote on the night that Nort went home with her for the first time. It is not a long letter, and was evidently written hastily at the little table I have so often seen, at which I once sat quietly for a long time, where one may easily glance up at the portrait over the mantel. It is the first letter in which she ever referred at any great length to Nort. And this is the letter:

Your friend,
A.D.

I have always thought that Nort was a little abashed at the way in which he talked to Anthy on that first evening, though he never admitted it in so many words. And an incident occurred the next day that caused him to take a new attitude toward her. Up to this time he had treated her just like any other member of the staff, with easy, off-hand freedom. One of the visitors inquired:

"May I see the proprietor of the Star?"

Fergus replied: "Miss Doane will be here in a few minutes."

It struck Nort all in a heap. She was the proprietor, and, therefore, his employer. It gave him a curious, and rather unpleasant, twinge inside somewhere; yes, and it hurt a little, but wound up by being irresistibly funny. She was his "boss," this girl, she actually paid him his wages. She could discharge him, too, by George! He stopped suddenly and went off into a wild shout of laughter. Fergus took his pipe out of his mouth, held it a moment while he looked Nort over, and then, slowly nodding his head but saying never a word, put it back again.

Now, if there was anything in this world that irked the Nort of those days it was the feeling of restraint, of being reined in. All that day, in spite of varied excitements which followed the publication of the poetry, Nort was overcome from time to time by the thought of Anthy as his "boss," and, in spite of all he could do, there were other feelings, curious, inexplicable feelings, mingled with the amusement he felt.

It was inevitable that Nort should somehow act upon the impulse of this new thought. His eager mind played with it, suggesting a thousand amusing plans. Here was a situation that had possibilities.

In the middle of the afternoon Nort suddenly pretended to be out of a job, and walking up to Anthy's desk he stood up very straight and stiff, and pulling at a lock of hair over his forehead, said very respectfully:

"What shall I do next, miss?"

Anthy glanced up at him. It rather offended his vanity that she seemed so surprised to see him there. Evidently he was very far from her thoughts. His face was as sober and as blank as the face of nature, but Anthy saw the spark in his eyes—and the challenge—though she did not know exactly what he meant.

He pulled his forelock again, and in a voice still more subdued and respectful, repeated:

"What shall I do next, miss?"

There was a slightly higher colour in Anthy's face, but she looked squarely into his eyes and said quietly:

"You'd better help Fergus clean up the press."

I shall never forget the look of puzzled wonder and chagrin in Nort's face as he turned away. Anthy went back to her work with apparent unconcern.