as much as I can, if I am
to tell her story and her husband's and my own in their true
proportions. Otherwise we should but appear as one of those "eternal
triangles" to which so much of French dramatic genius has been devoted;
whereas it appears to me, though not, I am afraid, to Fulton, that if
our relations to each other could be symbolized by a figure, that
figure would not be a triangle; but a cross, let us say, between a
triangle and a square.

Fulton and I are the same age. We were in the same class at Mr.
Cutter's school for a year or two, and were quite friendly at times.
But except that we both collected postage stamps, we had no tastes in
common. It is almost enough to say that he was full of character and
reserve, and that I was unstable and kept the whole of my goods
displayed in the shop window. I cannot imagine thirteen-year-old
Fulton in love with fifteen-year-old Nell or Nancy, but I was
frequently in love with both at the same time, or so fancied myself,
and, almost consciously, as it seems, he was conserving his powers of
loving for the one great passion of his life, when he should give all
that a man may have in him of purity and faith and purpose. But when
my time for a great passion came, though I gave all that I had to give,
it is true, still that _all_ was not the whole that I might have had;
it was only all that was left, all that had not already been given.
But there was enough at that to hurt and do harm.

Fulton was studious and enamored of knowledge for its own sake. I was
lazy and only interested in such pieces of knowledge as I felt might be
of use to me. But we both stood well in our classes; he because he had
brains and knew how to use them, and I because the Lord had gifted me
with a capital sight memory.

Perhaps I should do better to state who our intimates were in those
days, and what has become of them. Fulton's most intimate friend was a
boy named Lansing, who made a practice of cutting open dead things to
see what was inside of them. Today Lansing (of course that's not his
real name) is so great a surgeon that even the man in the street knows
him by sight. My most intimate friend was Harry Colemain, and we were
mixed up in all sorts of deviltries together. To me he has been always
a faithful friend and a charming companion, but of his career, what can
I say that is really pleasant? Nothing, unless I modify each statement
by pages of explanation and reminiscence. As