"Wouldn't it be strange," Clover asked, when her sister showed her the letter, "if little Helen should catch Jack's heart on the rebound, after all?"
Mildred returned her look with unusual gravity. "Are men's hearts so unfaithful, do you think?" she asked seriously.
"Sometimes," answered Clover, "when they despair; and women's, too."
"Then they are unworthy," Mildred said quietly.
No winter ever suffered more than this by contrast with the summer. In public print and by private hearsay, the bitter needs of the poor surrounded one. The corpse of the White City lay wrapped in a winding-sheet of snow. The sisters never entered the grounds from the afternoon its spirit departed. They looked askance, in passing, at the buildings, with their cold, silent surroundings, where so recently all had been life and warmth. The same domes and façades upreared under the cold sky. One could only say as he does in glancing tenderly and sadly at a dear, dead face: "How natural it looks!"
Little wonder that plans were innumerable for preserving a portion of that dream of beauty, to be resuscitated and to become the joy of one more summer; but the work of spoliation had begun, and would march on inexorably.
"Miss Mildred has grown awful quiet, Mrs. Van Tassel," said old Jeanie one day in confidence. "It's a wrong you're doing her, I'm thinking, letting her quench all her bright spirits in those holes she visits."
"I think not, Jeanie," Clover replied. "Miss Mildred is having a deep experience; but we can't help the sorrow in the world except by coming close to it."
"I saw tears in her eyes the other night," whispered Jeanie profoundly, "and I asked the poor child why, and what do you suppose she answered?"
"I suppose she had the heartache over some of our new friends."