ng backwards into the bedroom, and
rushing in again, having deposited out of sight the cap she was so proud
of constructing, took my hands in hers, and asked me 'if we should be
friends.'

"'Friends!' I do not think that during the long intimacy that followed
that child-like meeting, extending from the year '26 to her leaving
England in '38, during which time I saw her frequently every day, and
certainly every week,--I do not think she ever loved me as I loved
her,--how could she?--but I was proud of the confidence and regard she
did accord me, and would have given half my own happiness to shelter her
from the envy and evil that embittered the spring and summer-time of her
blighted life. It always seemed to me impossible not to love her, not to
cherish her. Perhaps the greatest magic she exercised was, that, after
the first rush of remembrance of all that wonderful young woman had
written had subsided, she rendered you completely oblivious of what she
had done by the irresistible charm of what she was. You forgot all about
her books,--you only felt the intense delight of life with her; she was
penetrating and sympathetic, and entered into your feelings so entirely
that you wondered how 'the little witch' could read you so readily and
so rightly,--and if, now and then, you were startled, perhaps dismayed,
by her wit, it was but the prick of a diamond arrow. Words and thoughts
that she flung hither and thither, without design or intent beyond the
amusement of the moment, come to me still with a mingled thrill of
pleasure and pain that I cannot describe, and that my most friendly
readers, not having known her, could not understand.

"When I knew her first, she certainly looked much younger than she was.
When we talked of ages, which we did the first day, I found it difficult
to believe she was more than seventeen,--she was so slight, so fragile,
so girlish in her gestures and manners. In after-days I often wondered
what made her so graceful. Her neck was short, her shoulders high. You
saw these defects at the first glance, just as you did that her nose was
_retrousse_, and that she was underhung, which ought to have spoiled the
expression of her mouth,--but it did not; you saw all this at once, but
you never thought about it after the first five minutes. Her complexion
was clear, her hair dark and silken, and the lashes that sheltered her
gray eyes long and slightly upturned. Her voice was inexpressibly sweet
and modulate