nd in the meanwhile discount, if
possible, the fright that he had given her. To this end he wrote the
following letter:

"It wasn't your fault that I lifted my eyes to you, and hoped that you
would lower yours to me. But now I know what a fool I have been. I
forgive you for laughing at me, though at the time it made me mad like a
dog, and I only wanted to hurt the woman I love. I won't trouble you any
more, ever. Indeed I am too ashamed and humbled ever to wish to see you
again. Only please don't hate me. If I had any good sides, please
remember them. Some time you will hear of me again; but never again from
me. I have work to do, but I have given my time to dreaming.

"When your father comes back will you ask him to let me know if he will
see me? You thought he could do something for me--or hold out some hope.
I would risk my life itself to be whole, even if I could never be very
active. And science is so wonderful; and I know your father would like
to help me if he could.

"If you don't think I am being punished for threatening you, and going
crazy, you don't know anything about the unhappiest beast in this world.
But it is terrible for a cripple when the one person he looks up to
laughs at him. I have a thick skin; but that burnt through it
like acid."

The messenger who carried the letter to Barbara brought him her answer:

"I will give your message to my father. You are quite wrong about the
laughing. I didn't laugh at you or anything about you. I laughed because
I was nervous and frightened. But it can't matter much one way or the
other. I am sorry that you have been hurt twice by my family. But the
second hurt is not our fault. And I do not see that there is anything to
be done about it. As for the first, my father would end his days in
peace if he could make you whole. I shall hope to hear nothing but good
of you in the future."

The shame and remorse to which Blizzard pretended, Barbara actually
felt. All her friendships with men had been pursued by disasters of
some sort or other. But her most disastrous experiment in friendship had
been with Blizzard. She had been bluntly told by truth-speaking persons
that he was not a fit acquaintance for her. His own face had warned her.
But she had persisted in meeting him without precautions, in treating
him like an equal, in overcoming her natural and just repugnance to him,
and in calling him her friend. It was humiliating for her to realize and
acknowledge that