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 laugh—­I used to think of course they stood for happiness.  There can be many smiles, much laughter, and it means—­nothing.  But surely anything is kinder for a friend to see than tears!

When Carl returned from the East in January, he was more rushed than ever—­his time more filled than ever with strike mediations, street-car arbitrations, cost of living surveys for the Government, conferences on lumber production.  In all, he had mediated thirty-two strikes, sat on two arbitration boards, made three cost-of-living surveys for the Government. (Mediations did gall him—­he grew intellectually impatient over this eternal patching up of what he was wont to call “a rotten system.”  Of course he saw the war-emergency need of it just then, but what he wanted to work on was, why were mediations ever necessary? what social and economic order would best ensure absence of friction?)