Miss Sylvia shook her head with a sad smile . `` I can not be sure . Sometimes I think he did . But then the doubt creeps back again . I would give almost anything to know that he did -- to know that I have not lavished all the love of my life on a man who did not want it . And I never can know , never -- I can hope and almost believe , but I can never know . Oh , you do n't understand -- a man could n't fully understand what my pain has been over it . You see now why I want you to change the story . I am sorry for that poor girl , but if you only let her know that he really loves her she will not mind all the rest so very much ; she will be able to bear the pain of even life-long separation if she only knows . '' Miss Sylvia picked up her knitting and went away . As for me , I thought savagely of the dead man she loved and called him a cad , or at best , a fool . Next day Miss Sylvia was her serene , smiling self once more , and she did not again make any reference to what she had told me . A fortnight later she returned home and I went my way back to the world . During the following winter I wrote several letters to Miss Sylvia and received replies from her . Her letters were very like herself . When I sent her the third-rate magazine containing my story -- nothing but a third-rate magazine would take it in its rewritten form -- she wrote to say that she was so glad that I had let the poor girl know . Early in April I received a letter from an aunt of mine in the country , saying that she intended to sell her place and come to the city to live . She asked me to go out to Sweetwater for a few weeks and assist her in the business of settling up the estate and disposing of such things as she did not wish to take with her . When I arrived at Sweetwater I found it moist and chill with the sunny moisture and teasing chill of our Canadian springs . They are long and fickle and reluctant , these springs of ours , but , oh , the unnamable charm of them !
There was something even XXXXX the red buds of the maples at Sweetwater and in the long , smoking stretches of hillside fields that sent a thrill through my veins , finer and subtler than any given by old wine .
During for from if in like of that to with