“I am fifteen years older than you, and know the world well--better than I wish I did--so well that I should like to protect you from its ugly phases. Yet I am powerless to do it. Never did I so deeply lament my aimless, wasted life as now, when I see myself with nothing to offer you and yet loving you with all my heart. Sometimes, since I have known you, I have dreamed that with your help I could pull myself together and make something of my life yet; but the dream is only temporary--it flees, the reaction comes and I sink back to the _rôle_ of a nobody which I have long been playing, and doubtless shall play to the end--an end that I may make for myself any day. “To say that I despise myself for being the wretched failure I am is to express myself but lamely. My love has in it an element of the paternal. I am not thinking so much of what you might be to me, but of what I earnestly wish I might be to you. I long to shield you from the infinite horror of the experience we call life, as it is revealed to many. You are like a tall young pine-tree standing alone on a high rugged and rocky mountain side, enjoying the sunshine and swaying gently in the summer breeze, not knowing that the winter of the future will bring storms that may tear its roots from the earth. You know not your own value, that is the danger. Some day you may give your love and have your heart broken. That’s what happens to strong souls usually, and you are one of them. I know the answer to the woman poet’s question: “‘Is it so, O Christ in heaven, that the highest suffer most? That the strongest wander farthest, and most hopelessly are lost? That the mark of rank in nature is capacity for pain, And the anguish of the singer, makes the sweetness of the strain? “‘I have many things to tell you, but ye cannot bear them now.’ “Yes, I know the answer to that, and it makes me anxious about your future. Behold the pitiful spectacle of a man who loves a woman, tells her of it, and yet confesses himself a hopeless failure.” “But why do you insist upon considering yourself a failure?” asked Miss Hill. “You are not old, you have good health, education, ability, the necessary ingredients for achievement.” “Child, you do not understand. How could you? the ruin is within, not visible on the outer walls.” “No; I do not understand,” she said. “I will tell you,” he said, “how I came to be a loiterer in the race, what “‘----wrought my woe, In the diamond morning of long ago,’ as the song says. You see I began by asking you about yourself, and, with the artless art that distinguishes you, with scarcely a word, you have switched me off the track I had taken and set me talking about myself instead. I shall lose in your respect after I tell my story, as a matter of course, but I would rather you knew it.