d confirmation of the words. There
was nothing in the incidents of "Laurels and Thorns" which resembled his
own troubles or the relations which had existed between them--except the
simple fact of the mutual intellectual and moral sympathy of the two
central characters. The hero had won his crown of laurels and wore his
crown of thorns; the heroine, who could not love him in his triumph, had
loved him in his humiliation.

Both descended in the scale of material prosperity to rise in the scale
of honor and mutual respect; the glory of life was extinguished, but it
gave place to the glory of love. Alan read again and again the borrowed
words with which Lettice's heroine concluded her written confession of
love for the man whom she had once rejected, and who thought himself
precluded by his disgrace from coming to her again.

"He fixed thee mid this dance
Of plastic circumstance,
This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest:
Machinery just meant
To give thy soul its bent,
Try thee, and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed.

"What though the earlier grooves
That ran the laughing loves
Around thy base no longer pause and press?
What though, about thy rim,
Scull things in order grim
Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress?

"Look not thou down but up!
To uses of a cup,
The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal,
The new wine's foaming flow,
The Master's lips a-glow!
Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou with earth's wheel?"

These were words of comfort to Alan, if only he dare take them to
himself, if he dare imagine that Lettice had had him in her mind as she
wrote, and had sent him that message to restore his self-respect and
save him from despair.

He sat for some time with the book before him, and then another thought
came into his head. Why should he not write to her, just a few words to
let her know that what she had written had gone home to his heart, and
that amongst all her critics there was not one who understood her better
than he? He was entitled to do this; it was almost due to himself to do
it. He would take care not to make a fool of himself this time, as he
had done in his first letter to her.

So he took a pen and wrote:

"I have read your book. You would not expect to find me amongst the
critics