I have thought that there may be something in the conditions with which you are here surrounded which is repugnant to your feelings,—­something which can be avoided only by keeping yourself apart from the people whose acquaintance you would naturally have formed.  There can hardly be anything in the place itself, or you would not have voluntarily sought it as a residence, even for a single season there might be individuals here whom you would not care to meet, there must be such, but you cannot have a personal aversion to everybody.  I have heard of cases in which certain sights and sounds, which have no particular significance for most persons, produced feelings of distress or aversion that made, them unbearable to the subjects of the constitutional dislike.  It has occurred to me that possibly you might have some such natural aversion to the sounds of the street, or such as are heard in most houses, especially where a piano is kept, as it is in fact in almost all of those in the village.  Or it might be, I imagined, that some color in the dresses of women or the furniture of our rooms affected you unpleasantly.  I know that instances of such antipathy have been recorded, and they would account for the seclusion of those who are subject to it.

If there is any removable condition which interferes with your free entrance into and enjoyment of the social life around you, tell me, I beg of you, tell me what it is, and it shall be eliminated.  Think it not strange, O my brother, that I thus venture to introduce myself into the hidden chambers of your life.  I will never suffer myself to be frightened from the carrying out of any thought which promises to be of use to a fellow-mortal by a fear lest it should be considered “unfeminine.”  I can bear to be considered unfeminine, but I cannot endure to think of myself as inhuman.  Can I help you, my brother’?

Believe me your most sincere well-wisher,
Lurida Vincent.

Euthymia had carried off this letter and read it by herself.  As she finished it, her feelings found expression in an old phrase of her grandmother’s, which came up of itself, as such survivals of early days are apt to do, on great occasions.

“Well, I never!”

Then she loosened some button or string that was too tight, and went to the window for a breath of outdoor air.  Then she began at the beginning and read the whole letter all over again.

What should she do about it?  She could not let this young girl send a letter like that to a stranger of whose character little was known except by inference,—­to a young man, who would consider it a most extraordinary advance on the part of the sender.  She would have liked to tear it into a thousand pieces, but she had no right to treat it in that way.  Lurida meant to send it the next morning, and in the mean time Euthymia had the night to think over what she should do about it.

There is nothing like the pillow for an oracle.  There is no voice like that which breaks the silence—­of the stagnant hours of the night with its sudden suggestions and luminous counsels.  When Euthymia awoke in the morning, her course of action was as clear before her as if it bad been dictated by her guardian angel.  She went straight over to the home of Lurida, who was just dressed for breakfast.