other, how little qualified to cope with life alone. True, you'll
doubt whether I've really missed you; nay I did not even realize it
myself. I was enchained by a passion which like some diabolical
enchantment, made me a stranger even to myself. I know not how much you
know or suspect, dear friend. For the first time in my life I learned,
a woman's power, and suffered keenly from it. It's over, Leah, the last
trace of it has vanished. She's about to become another's wife, and I
heard the news without the slightest heart-throb. Oh! Leah, those were
terrible days! When I think that the result might have been different,
that I might have been forever forced to bow to this power--a power
which treated pride and freedom, all that was worthy and precious in
life, as a toy, and rendered me almost unfeeling, even in the days of
Balder's keenest sufferings--I shudder at myself and the danger I have
escaped. But you ought to know, Leah, the weakness of the man who now
comes to you and says: 'will you, can you, notwithstanding all that has
happened, unite your life to mine? Can you give your soul to one who
has already once lost his own, while both he and you, perhaps may never
wholly overcome the smart of his servitude?'

"If you were to say no, Leah, I should understand why and be forced to
bear the pain. I know that I was dear to you. You would have burned
that book rather than have entrusted it to my care, if your heart had
not resistlessly drawn you toward me. And yet, Leah, I should not think
less of you if after the confession I have just made, your heart should
draw back, your pride forbid you to be satisfied with that which I
offer with this perfect candor. You've a right to expect and demand
that the man to whom you give yourself will repay you for the treasure
with such enthusiastic and passionate devotion, that even the thought
that any other power could become dangerous to him, would never enter
his mind. I, dearest Leah, am, as you see me, a fugitive, whose wounds
are scarcely healed after a severe battle. I come to you because I know
I can nowhere be safer, nowhere find a more inaccessible refuge than
with you. What I feel for you--we've not yet come to Spinoza," he
interrupted himself with a quiet smile, "so the phraseology of the
schools is not familiar to you. He, the great philosopher, calls the
feeling men have for that which he termed God--the absolute something
which encompasses, does and wills everything--th