e shows plainly that you know it. And
when you say your heart's blood runs cold at the thought of what
may happen when Minghelli returns from England, you betray the
weakness, the natural weakness, the tender and womanly weakness,
which justifies me in saying that, as long as we love each other,
you and I should never meet again.

"Don't think that I am a coward and tremble at the death that
hangs over me. I neither fear the future nor regret the past. In
every true cause some one is called to martyrdom. To die for the
right, for humanity, to lay down all you hold most dear for the
sake of the poor and the weak and the down-trodden and God's holy
justice--it is a magnificent duty, a privilege! And I am ready. If
my death is enough, let me give the last drop of my blood, and be
dragged through the last degrees of infamy. Only don't let me drag
another after me, and endanger a life that is a thousand times
dearer to me than my own.

"I want you, dearest, I want you with my soul, but my doom is
certain; it waits for me somewhere; it may be here, it may be
there; _it may come to me to-morrow_, or next day, or next year,
but it is coming, I feel it, I am sure of it, and I will not fly
away. But if I go on until my beloved is my bride, and my name is
stamped all over her, and she has taken up my fate, and we are
one, and the world knows no difference, what then? Then death with
its sure step will come in to separate us, and after death for me,
danger, shame, poverty for you, all the penalties a woman pays for
her devotion to a man who is down and done.

"I couldn't bear it. The very thought of it would unman me. It
would turn heaven into hell. It would disturb the repose of the
grave itself.

"Isn't it hard enough to do what is before me without tormenting
myself with thoughts like these? It is true I have had my dreams
like other men--dreams of the woman whom Heaven might give a man
for his support--the anchor to which his soul might hold in storm
and tempest, and in the very hour of death itself. But what woman
is equal to a lot like that? Martyrdom is for man. God keep all
women safe from it!

"Have I said sufficient? If this letter gives you half the pain on
reading it that I have felt in writing it, you will be satisfied
at last that the obstacles to our union are p