During my morning work my friendship with Mrs. Winchell ripened rapidly.  We had an excellent start in the circumstance that we were Americans.  We knew of cities, of some people in common.  Abigail had come from Connecticut and that, in a sense, laid a foundation for our conversations.  We were working together, she with painting, I with drawing and etching.  We criticized and suggested concerning each other’s work.  Or we put down our brushes and pencils and talked of life.  In this way at last she knew of my going to America as a youth of eighteen, of the farm, of Zoe, of my marriage, my life in Chicago, my long friendship with Douglas, and lastly of Dorothy’s death at sea.  Her eyes would look intently into mine.  And when I told her that I considered my life practically wasted she said:  “Do you know every one’s life is wasted; nearly every one.  Few find their work and pursue it.  Most of us are drawn aside, or tripped, or blinded.  Your friend Douglas seems to me to have had a wasted life.  As you tell me all this I see you as a man of tremendous will drawn into an accidental path, not his real path.  You are an artist at heart.  I don’t mean that you will ever be a great etcher, though one cannot tell; I mean that all this turbulence, sordidness, American hurry, waste, vulgarity, agitation, politics, did not belong to you.  But what right have I to talk?  My life is a waste too.”

Little by little I learned from her what her life had been, what its central impulse was.  She was a poor girl who hungered for opportunity.  She had looked with critical eyes upon marriageable men.  I wondered if she had been attractive to many men, if many had had the discernment to see what she was.  If a young woman marries an elderly man of wealth it is probable that no young man of wealth has come to her at the favorable hour; and probable, too, that no man of merely compelling magnetism has been interested in her.  Mr. Winchell was kindly, a noble nature; he gave her a tender, but only a paternal love.  But through him she had traveled; she had had the beauty of life for which her heart was insatiable.  There were no children; there never would be children, and what lavish, ecstatic affection she bestowed upon my Reverdy!  So day by day I learned that she was a teacher in Connecticut when Mr. Winchell came along, willing to give her everything if she would marry him.  He had been rather a heavy drinker up to this time, now five years before; when he left off drink for awhile.  Then he had begun again, but rarely indulged to excess.  It may be that drink had emasculated him before he married her; but now if because of this he tippled occasionally, he was justified in medicine which dulled feelings that he could not be a husband to this radiant woman, who treated him always with such tenderness and devotion, always honored him with such scrupulous attention.

She wanted a child above all things.  All of us remember some woman whom we knew in youth who kept canaries, or raised flowers or had some queer little fad.  We learn to know why women do this.  In her case she expressed her mother’s passion in studies, in art, in travel, in friendship, in kindness to every one; above all in devotion to her husband.  She mothered him in the most tender and beautiful way.  In a little while I knew all her story, as she did mine.