“Lucy,” he cried, “I think if I had not loved you for yourself, I should have loved you for your simple dresses. I have been so suffocated in our modern atmosphere of luxury--stifled with the odour of Ess. Bouquet, snowed-up in silks and laces, and soft-scented plumes, and the faint perfume of sandal-wood fans, and the crush and crowd of modern fashion--that to find a woman who could be pretty without the aid of Truefitt, and could charm without the art of Descou, was piquant as a discovery; but I will not stop to speak of these things. While I waited, the woman whom I dearly loved married another man, older by many years than herself, in every way unsuited to her. Within a year of her marriage I met her unexpectedly, and her face told me that I was not quite forgotten. After that meeting, fate threw us much together; and oh, Lucy, now I come to the hard part of my confession! Her husband trusted me, and I wronged him; by no act which the world calls guilt, but by a sentimental flirtation, licensed by the world so long as it is unprotested against by the husband. It was pleasant to us to meet, and we met; it was pleasant to her to read the books I recommended, to sing the songs I chose for her. Among the costlier gifts of her husband, her morning-room was sometimes adorned with a rustic basket of hothouse flowers from me. At the Opera, in picture-galleries, in her own house, we met, week after week, month after month. No friendship was ever more intellectual; nothing within the meaning of the word flirtation was ever less guilty. By and by I wrote to her--letters about art, about books, about music, about the gossip of the world in which we lived, with here and there a half-expressed regret for my own broken life or her uncongenial marriage. Love-letters in the common sense of the word they were not; but letters so long and so frequent might, if received by her at her own house, have attracted attention; so they were directed to a neighbouring post-office. _That_, Lucy, was our worst guilt; and it wrecked us. One day the letters were found, and the husband tacitly signed his wife’s condemnation without having troubled himself so much as to read the evidence against her. From that hour my life was devoted to the woman who had suffered by my selfishness and folly; from that hour to this we have been friends in the fullest sense of the word, and friends only. If ever the day of her freedom comes, I shall claim her as my wife; if it should never come, I shall go to my grave unmarried. And now, Lucy, you know all; you know that I love you; and you know why I have fought a hard fight against my love, and am angry with myself for being betrayed into this confession.”