mind seemed alien to me in the anti-humanitarian attitude which you
assumed to life. Yet it was this very power in you to surpass in
philosophy all mere mortal conditions that fascinated my attention,
compelled my allegiance. And for a long while I stood in jealous awe of
your "upper chamber." I resented that cold expression of your
spirituality. Then suddenly I was like a white moth beating my wings
against your high windows.

In those days, Philip, I felt that I could be forever contented if only I
_knew_ that you loved me, and that your loving included all the strange
altitudes of your mind. Nor can I ever forget the happiness I felt in the
first assurances of your tenderness. They seemed to justify and set me
free. I danced many a pagan rhythm through my forest, and dared every bird
with a song. I had that liberty of being which comes of perfect
peace,--the same I have heard father's repentant sinners profess. And I
was resolved, oh, so firmly! never to compromise it with any sacrifice of
romance to reality.

But, alas! now I know that if a man loves a woman, this is only the
beginning of a long negotiation, carried forward in poetic terms; and that
his love is a sort of _fi. fa._, which he will some day serve upon her
heart.

Upon your first visit to Morningtown it was easy to hold out against you,
for you were such a distant, dignified admirer then. Your apparent
diffidence, your natural reserve, seemed to give me a coquettish advantage
over the situation, and I was not slow to avail myself of it. How was I to
know there was such a mad lover lying concealed behind your classic pose?
Thus it was that I compromised all the armies of my heart. Henceforth I
marched madly, dizzily to my final surrender. I could not have saved
myself if a thousand Bluechers had hurried to my defence. And there even
came a time when I desired my own capitulation; a thing which, owing to
some perversity of nature, I was unable to accomplish of my own will.

But you will remember how that finally came about, and it might have come
so much earlier if you had made your first visit with the same brigand
determination as your second. And you brought Jack with you! How droll you
two looked that day as you stood upon our narrow door-sill awaiting your
welcome! There was no accent of paternity in your expression to justify
poor little Jack's presence. The relationship between you seemed so
ludicrously artificial,--as if you had somehow got an