Eisendecker’s fingers clutched me convulsively, and while a bitter laugh broke from him, he said, ‘You wouldn’t tear them asunder, would you?’ For the rest of the way he never spoke again, and I, fearful of awakening the expression of that grief which, when avowed, became confirmed, never opened my lips, save to say, ‘Good-night.’ I never intended to have involved myself in a regular story when I began this chapter, nor must I do so now, though, sooth to say, it would not be without its interest to trace the career of these two youths, who now became gradually estranged from each other, and were no longer to be seen, as of old, walking with arms on each other’s shoulder--the most perfect realisation of true brotherly affection. Day by day the distance widened between them; each knew the secret of the other’s heart, yet neither dared to speak of it. From distrust there is but a short step to dislike--alas! it is scarcely even a step. They parted. Every one knows that the reaction which takes place when some long- standing friendship has been ruptured is proportionate to the warmth of the previous attachment. Still the cause of this, in a great measure, is more attributable to the world about us than to ourselves; we make partisans to console us for the loss of one who was our confidant, and in the violence of _their_ passions we are carried away as in a current. The students were no exception to this theory; scarcely had they ceased to regard each other as friends when they began to feel as enemies. Alas! is it not ever so? Does not the good soil, which, when cultivated with care, produce the fairest flowers and the richest fruits, rear up, when neglected and abandoned, the most noxious weeds and the rankest thistles? And yet it was love for another--that passion so humanising in its influence, so calculated to assuage the stormy and vindictive traits of even a savage nature--it was love that made them thus. To how many is the ‘light that lies in woman’s eyes’ but a beacon to lure to ruin? When we think that but one can succeed where so many strive, what sadness and misery must not result to others?