Helping her in her trouble helped me to bear my own.  And I came to see that ministering to a need outside one’s own is the surest means of finding comfort in sorrow for oneself.  I have been very selfish Stumpy.  I have been gradually waking to that fact for a long while.  I used to immerse myself in those letters to try and get the feeling of his dear presence.  Very, very often I didn’t succeed.  And I know now that it was because I was forcing myself to look back and not forward.  I think material things are apt to make one do that.  But when material things are taken quite away, then one is forced upon the spiritual.  And that is what has happened to me.  No one can take anything from me now because what I possess is laid up in store for me.  I am moving forward towards it every day.”

She ceased to speak, and again for the space of seconds the silence fell.

Scott broke it, speaking slowly, as if not wholly certain of the wisdom of speech.  “I did not know,” he said, “that you had lost those letters.”

Her face contracted momentarily with the memory of a past pain.  “Eustace destroyed them,” she stated simply.

His brows drew sharply together.  “Isabel!  Do you mean that?”

She pressed his hand.  “Yes, dear.  I knew you would feel it badly so I didn’t tell you before.  He acted for the best.  I see that quite clearly now.  And—­in a sense—­the best has come of it.”

Scott got to his feet with the gesture of a man who can barely restrain himself.  “He did—­that?” he said.

She reached up a soothing hand.  “My dear, it doesn’t matter now.  Don’t be angry with him.  I know that he meant well.”

Scott’s eyes looked down into hers, intensely bright, burningly alive.  “No wonder,” he said, breathing deeply, “that you never want to see him again!”

“No, Stumpy; that is not so.”  Gently she made answer; her hand held his almost pleadingly.  “For a long time I felt like that, it is true.  But now it is all over.  There is no bitterness left in my heart at all.  We have grown away from each other, he and I. But we were very close friends once, and because of that I would give much—­oh, very much—­to be friends with him again.  It was in a very great measure my selfishness that came between us, my pride too.  I had influence with him, Stumpy, and I didn’t try to use it.  I simply threw him off because he disapproved of my husband.  I might have won him, I feel that I could have won him if I had tried.  But I wouldn’t.  And afterwards, when my mind was clouded, my influence was all gone.  I wish I could get it back again.  I feel as if I might.  But he is keeping away now because of Dinah.  And I am afraid too that he feels I do not want him—­” her eyes were suddenly dim with tears.  “That is not so, Stumpy.  I do want him.  Sometimes—­in the night—­I long for him.  But, for little Dinah’s sake—­”

She paused, for Scott had suddenly turned and was pacing the room rapidly, unevenly, as if inaction had become unendurable.