"You fear the world too much," she answered, gently. "All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?" "What then?" he retorted. "Even if I have grown so much wiser, what then? I am not changed toward you." She shook her head. "Am I?" "Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were both poor and content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry. You _are_ changed. When it was made, you were another man." "I was a boy," he said impatiently. "Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are," she returned. "I am. That which promised happiness when we were one in heart, is fraught with misery now that we are two. How often and how keenly I have thought of this, I will not say. It is enough that I _have_ thought of it, and can release you." "Have I ever sought release?" "In words. No. Never." "In what, then?" "In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another atmosphere of life; another Hope as its great end. In everything that made my love of any worth or value in your sight. If this had never been between us," said the girl, looking mildly, but with steadiness, upon him; "can even I believe that you would choose a dowerless girl: or, choosing her, do I not know that your repentance and regret would surely follow? I do; and I release you. With a full heart, for the love of him you once were." He was about to speak; but she left him and they parted. "Spirit!" said Scrooge, "show me no more! Conduct me home. Why do you delight to torture me?" "I told you these were shadows of the things that have been," said the Ghost. "That they are what they are, do not blame me!" "Remove me!" Scrooge exclaimed. "I cannot bear it!" He turned upon the Ghost, and seeing that it looked upon him with a face, in which some strange way there were fragments of all the faces it had shown him, wrestled with it. "Leave me! Take me back. Haunt me no longer!" In the struggle--if that can be called a struggle in which the Ghost, with no visible resistance on its own part was undisturbed by any effort of its adversary--Scrooge was conscious of being exhausted, and overcome by an irresistible drowsiness; and, further, of being in his own bed-room. He had barely time to reel to bed, before he sank into a heavy sleep. STAVE THREE. THE SECOND OF THE THREE SPIRITS.