But I did not know Theresa.  After her husband’s death, which occurred very soon, she let me come to her and we had a long talk—­ Shall I ever forget it or the sight of her beauty in that sordid room?  For, account for it as you will, the loveliness which had fled under her sense of complete isolation had slowly regained its own with the recognition that she still had a place in the heart of her little sister.  Not even the sorrow she felt for the loss of her suffering husband—­and she did mourn him; this I am glad to say—­could more than temporarily stay this.  Six months of ease and wholesome food would make her—­I hardly dared to think what.  For I knew, without asking her, or she telling me, that she would accept neither; that she was as determined now, as ever that nothing which came directly or indirectly from Father should go to the rebuilding of her life.  That she intended to start anew and work her way up to a place where I should be glad to see her she did say.  But nothing more.  She was still the sister-mother, loving, but sufficient to herself, though she had but ten dollars left in the world, as she showed me with a smile that made her beautiful as an angel.

I can see that shabby little purse yet with its one poor greasy bill;—­a sum to her but to me the price of a luncheon or a gift of flowers.  How I longed, as I looked at it to tear every jewel from my poor, bedecked body and fling them one and all into her lap.  I had worn them in profusion, though carefully hidden under my coat, in the hope that she would accept one of them at least, But she refused all, even such as had been gifts of friends and schoolmates, only humouring me this far, that she let me hang them for a few minutes about her neck and in her hair and then pull them all off again.  But this one vision of her in the splendour she was born to comforted me.  Henceforth in wearing them it would be of her and not of myself I should think.

Well, I had to leave her and go home to my French and Italian lessons, my music-masters and all the luxuries of our father’s house.  Should I ever see her again?  I did not know; she had not promised.  I could not go often into the quarter where she lived, without rousing suspicion; and she had bidden me not to come again for a month.  So I waited, half fearing she would flit again before the month was up.  But she did not.  She was still there when—­

But I am going too fast.  The meeting I was about to mention was a very memorable one to me, and I must describe it from the beginning.  I had ridden in my own car as near as I dared to the street where she lived; the rest of the way I went on foot with one of the servants—­a new one—­following close behind me.  I was not exactly afraid, but the actions of some of the people I had encountered at my former visit warned me to be a little careful for my father’s sake if not for my own.  Her room—­she had but one —­was high up in a triangular court it was no pleasure to