that I am a plighted woman.
Then for us the struggle, for him the grief. I have to look on him and
deal it.

'I can refer him to Dr. Julius for my estimate of my husband's worth.

'"My Professor" was won by it. He once did incline to be the young bold
Englishman's enemy. "Why is he here? what seeks he among us?" It was
his jealousy, not of the man, but of the nation, which would send one to
break and bear away his carefully cultivated German lily. No eye but his
did read me through. And you endured the trial that was forced on you.
You made no claim for recompense when it was over. No, there is no pure
love but strong love! It belongs to our original elements, and of its
purity should never be question, only of its strength.

'I could not help you when you were put under scrutiny before the
margravine and the baroness. Help from me would have been the betrayal
of both. The world has accurate eyes, if they are not very penetrating.
The world will see a want of balance immediately, and also too true a
balance, but it will not detect a depth of concord between two souls
that do not show some fretfulness on the surface.

'So it was considered that in refusing my cousin Otto and other proposed
alliances, I was heart-free. An instructed princess, they thought, was
of the woeful species of woman. You left us: I lost you. I heard you
praised for civil indifference to me--the one great quality you do not
possess! Then it was the fancy of people that I, being very cold, might
be suffered to hear my cousin plead for himself. The majority of our
family favour Otto. He was permitted to woo me as though I had been
a simple maid; and henceforth shall I have pity for all poor little
feminine things who are so persecuted, asked to inflict cruelty--to take
a sword and strike with it. But I--who look on marriage as more than a
surrender--I could well withstand surpassing eloquence. It was easy to
me to be inflexible in speech and will when I stood there, entreated to
change myself. But when came magically the other, who is my heart, my
voice, my mate, the half of me, and broke into illumination of things
long hidden--oh! then did I say to you that it was my weakness had
come upon me? It was my last outcry of self--the "I" expiring. I am now
yours, "We" has long overshadowed "I," and now engulphs it. We are
one. If it were new to me to find myself interrogating the mind of my
beloved, relying on his courage, taking many proofs of his d