My letter, if written at all, ought to stop here. But thus much I have learned—that passion tinctured with sorrow is the greatest of egotists, and that the feeling that brooks no measure of repression or discouragement inspires a degree of courage little short of defiance. Thus stimulated, I feel a growing joy in being able to surmount artificial restraint and to address you as I know you would wish an honest girl who loves you with her whole heart, should speak. What will you think of me? Will you call me fickle and unworthy? unwomanly? In a word, will you misunderstand me? How could I know till my eyes were opened that there was but one sun? that the whole world to me was adjusted to your simple, noble qualities? How could I know that the music of the spheres meant the remembered tones of your voice, that your face should haunt alike every scene of splendor and every secret shadow, or that I would give my patrimony to be able to pass my fingers through your brown locks for ever so brief a moment? What am I writing? I dare not read it. How confident I feel, how transported with the thought that you may in remembering me forget my much-repented dictum, or at least relegate it to the Quixotic realm to which it belongs. As I near the close of my letter, I am possessed with a new fear. Shall I dare send it? What if you shall have discovered new powers in yourself, new persons out in the broad world, which shall make you glad of your escape? It is so long since I have heard of you, and life is so full of new things, I forget that you too have quite the right to change your mind. If this be your condition, do not, I beg of you, write me. I could not bear the humiliation as your great heart bore yours. Consign my letter, then, to the great silence, and only remember me as ever and always your sincere friend, ELLEN. What was his colossal fortune to David Morning now? Out of the past came this message of life and love; of a love gone forever, and a life which now seemed barren of purpose and hope. What is time but a name? The intervening years shriveled into nothingness, and he was again bathing in the light which shone from the eyes of the woman he loved, the one woman on earth or in heaven for him, yesterday and to-day and forever. Again he walked with her under the whispering foliage along the brow of the hill which crowns the Queen City of the plains, and watched the burning sunsets illumine the lavender mountains and change the clouds into embers of glory. Again he sat beside her, reading some tender or beautiful or stirring passage from poet or essayist. Again, at the good-night going, he felt her dainty kiss, thrilling his soul to ecstasy.