ur union when I see how courageous you can be. Oh,
how brave women are--every woman who ever marries a man! To take
her heart into her hands, and face the unknown in the fate of
another being, to trust her life into his keeping, knowing that if
he falls she falls too, and will never be the same again! What
_man_ could do it? Not one who was ever born into the world. Yet
some woman does it every day, promising some man that she
will--let me finish your quotation--

"'Meet, if thou require it, Both demands, Laying flesh and
spirit In thy hands.'

"Don't think I am too much troubled about the Minghelli matter,
and yet it is pitiful to think how merciless the world can be even
in the matter of a man's name. A name is only a word, but it is
everything to the man who bears it--honour or dishonour, poverty
or wealth, a blessing or a curse. If it is a good name, everybody
tries to take it away from him, but if it's a bad name and he has
attempted to drop it, everybody tries to fix it on him afresh.

"The name I was compelled to leave behind me when I returned to
Italy was a bad name in nothing except that it was the name of my
father, and if the spies and ferrets of authority ever fix it upon
me God only knows what mischief they may do. But one thing _I_
know--that if they do fix my father's name upon me, and bring me
to the penalties which the law has imposed on it, it will not be
by help of my darling, my beloved, my brave, brave girl with the
heart of gold.

"Dearest, I wrote to the Capitol immediately on receiving your
letter, and to-morrow morning I will go down myself to see that
everything is in train. I don't yet know how many days are
necessary to the preparations, but earlier than Thursday it would
not be wise to fix the event, seeing that Wednesday is the day of
the great mass meeting in the Coliseum, and, although the police
have proclaimed it, I have told the people they are to come. There
is some risk at the outset, which it would be reckless to run, and
in any case the time is short.

"Good-night! I can't take my pen off the paper. Writing to you is
like talking to you, and every now and then I stop and shut my
eyes, and hear your voice replying. Only it is myself who make the
answers, and they are not half so sweet as they would be in
reality. Ah, d