HOW I GOT MY OVERCOAT. 149 



edge of his misfortunes, he would have been un- 

 interesting. On Sunday he gave me a new con- 

 fidence. His friend up the road was an Everett 

 House acquaintance, made when he first came 

 from Boston. She was an angel ! She knew his 

 sad story, and she had given him her Puritan 

 heart. In the trying days to come I was to be 

 the link that should bind them in their corre- 

 spondence. She must not know of his degraded 

 position, and all letters were to pass under cover 

 to me. Even noblesse did not hide the tears 

 that this prospect of long separation wrung from 

 him, and he poured out his grief with most 

 touching unrestraint. This was the one sorrow 

 of his life that even his trained equanimity 

 could not conquer. It made me still more re- 

 spect his simple, honest nature and his un- 

 feigned grief. I was doubly sorry that this last 

 trial of separated love should be added to his 

 cup of bitterness. In our long Sunday talk he 

 told me of his home, and showed me the singu- 

 larly beautiful photographs of his mother and 

 sister, and — quite incidentally — one of himself 



