She went on:  “’Lawrence is making me a visit of a few days.  Isn’t he a queer boy!  I got Dr. Wilkinson to agree, as a great favor, to let Lawrence see a very interesting operation.  Right in the middle of it, Lawrence fainted dead away and had to be carried out.  But when he came to, he said he wouldn’t have missed it for anything, and before he could really sit up he was beginning a poem about the “cruel mercy of the shining knives."’” Sylvia shook her head.  “Isn’t that Lawrence!  Isn’t that Judith!”

Page agreed thoughtfully, their eyes meeting in a trustful intimacy.  They themselves might have been bound together by a family tie, so wholly natural seemed their sociable sitting together over the fire.  Sylvia thought with an instant’s surprise, “Isn’t it odd how close he has come to seem—­as though I’d always, always known him; as though I could speak to him of anything—­nobody else ever seemed that way to me, nobody!”

She read on from the letter:  “’All of us at St. Mary’s are feeling very sore about lawyers.  Old Mr. Winthrop had left the hospital fifteen thousand dollars in his will, and we’d been counting on that to make some changes in the operating-room and the men’s accident ward that are awfully needed.  And now comes along a miserable lawyer who finds something the matter with the will, and everything goes to that worthless Charlie Winthrop, who’ll probably blow it all in on one grand poker-playing spree.  It makes me tired!  We can’t begin to keep up with the latest X-ray developments without the new apparatus, and only the other day we lost a case, a man hurt in a railroad wreck, that I know we could have pulled through if we’d been better equipped!  Well, hard luck!  But I try to remember Mother’s old uncle’s motto, “Whatever else you do, don’t make a fuss!” Father has been off for a few days, speaking before Alumni reunions.  He looks very well.  Mother has got her new fruit cellar fixed up, and it certainly is great.  She’s going to keep the carrots and parsnips there too.  I’ve just heard that I’m going to graduate first in my class—­thought you might like to know.  Have a good time, Sylvia.  And don’t let your imagination get away with you.

“’Your loving sister,

“‘JUDITH,’”

“Of all the perfect characterizations!” murmured Page, as Sylvia finished.  “I can actually see her and hear her!”

“Oh, there’s nobody like Judith!” agreed Sylvia, falling into a reverie, her eyes on the fire.

The peaceful silence which ensued spoke vividly of the intimacy between them.

After a time Sylvia glanced up, and finding her companion’s eyes abstractedly fixed on the floor, she continued to look into his face, noting its fine, somewhat gaunt modeling, the level line of his brown eyebrows, the humor and kindness of his mouth.  The winter twilight cast its first faint web of blue shadow into the room.  The fire burned with a steady blaze.