his.

"Oh, Alice," said he, plaintively, "do not--do not, I beseech you--lead
me back again into that land of delusion I have just tried to escape
from. If you knew how I loved you--if you knew what it costs me to tear
that love out of my heart--you'd never wish to make the agony greater to
me."

"Dear Tony, it was a mere boyish passion. Remember for a moment how
it began. I was older than you--much older as regards life and the
world--and even older by more than a year. You were so proud to attach
yourself to a grown woman,--you a mere lad; and then your love--for
I will grant it was love--dignified you to yourself. It made you more
daring where there was danger, and it taught you to be gentler and
kinder, and more considerate to every one. All your good and great
qualities grew the faster that they had those little vicissitudes of
joy and sorrow, the sun and rain of our daily lives; but all that is not
love."

"You mean there is no love where there is no return of love?"

She was silent

"If so, I deny it. The faintest flicker of a hope was enough for me; the
merest shadow, a smile, a passing word, your mere 'Thank you, Tony,' as
I held your stirrup, the little word of recognition you would give when
I had done something that pleased you,--these--any of them--would send
me home happy,--happier, perhaps, than I ever shall be again."

"No, Tony, do not believe that," said she, calmly; "not," added she,
hastily, "that I can acquit myself of all wrong to you. No; I was in
fault,--gravely in fault I ought to have seen what would have come of
all our intimacy; I ought to have known that I could not develop all
that was best in your nature without making you turn in gratitude--well,
in love--to myself; but shall I tell you the truth? I over-estimated my
power over you. I not only thought I could make you love, but unlove me;
and I never thought what pain that lesson might cost--each of us."

"It would have been fairer to have cast me adrift at first," said he,
fiercely.

"And yet, Tony, you will be generous enough one of these days to think
differently!"

"I certainly feel no touch of that generosity now."

"Because you are angry with me, Tony,--because you will not be just to
me; but when you have learned to think of me as your sister, and
can come and say, Dear Alice, counsel me as to this, advise me as to
that,--then there will be no ill-will towards me for all I have done to
teach you the great stores that