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her things, and told me he was going to Alaska.
“Oh, not to seek my fortune,” he said, smiling. “That is for young men. But the steamship company have a place for me in their office there. I have always wanted to go, and now there is nothing to hold me. This poor little box goes with me; I shall scatter her ashes somewhere in those vast waters. And this I want you to keep for remembrance.” He dropped into my hands the necklace of carved amethysts she had worn on the night I first saw her.
“And, Nellie” He paused before me with his arms folded, standing exactly as he stood behind Modjeska’s chair in the moonlight on that New Year’s night; standing like a statue, or a sentinel, I had said then, not knowing what it was I felt in his attitude; but now I knew it meant indestructible constancy . . . almost indestructible youth. “Nellie,” he said, “I don’t want you to remember her as she was here. Remember her as she was when you were with us on Madison
