“Once we were riding—the active exercise suited her spirit, she needed the rapid excitement of a bounding steed. So we came dashing homeward, our horses covered with mud and foam, for she was more than usually self-absorbed, and seemed to forget how rapidly we rode. It was a dreary November afternoon, the sky closed in with chill, gray clouds, the fading sunlight sickly and uncertain. We were passing a recent clearing for a new bye-road to some little town. Many noble trees lay felled beside our path, and, at a little distance, we noticed a flickering flame. Some freak had prompted the woodman to fire a tall ash, that stood relieved in graceful outline. One half of the trunk was completely consumed, the fire burning upward steadily from the roots, had hollowed out a channel for itself, and, while the tree stood up bare and tall, was eating out its very heart and life. It startled me for a moment; but Beatrice reined in her horse suddenly, and pointing to it with her riding-whip, said— “‘There—do you know what that is? Have you ever felt it?’ “Her tone—her glance conveyed all her meaning. I, too, had thought the emblem truthful. I was sure now that I understood her. But we neither of us spoke again until we reached home. “Yet I would not tell her that I loved her—I had no right to think it was returned. Sometimes I thought so, when she turned to me with more than her usual confidence, or welcomed me with one of her loving smiles. I would have given worlds for the power to ask her, but something always repelled me. So I thought of her alone—I sought her society day after day, and from the very intensity of my feelings came a coldness and reserve that I did not feel. “One night, she had been asked in a small circle of intimate friends to read ‘Lady Geraldine,’ aloud. Miss Barret then was almost an unknown name, even in literary circles, and Beatrice was her warm admirer. Already familiar with every line of the poem, it received new grace and power from her lips. It suited her spirit, and her presence. She lost herself in the heroine, and I hung near her, carried away by the poet’s expression of all I felt for the beautiful creature before me. “I suppose ‘my heart was in my eyes.’ Once, she looked up; and, for an instant, her glance met my own. “Here is the passage— ‘But at last there came a pause. I stood all vibrating with thunder, Which my soul had used. The silence drew her face up like a caul. Could you guess what word she uttered? She looked up, as if in wonder, With tears beaded on her lashes, and said—‘Bertram!’ it was all.’ “Yes—that instant glance ‘was all;’ and yet it thrilled me with love and hope. Its yearning—almost agonized—tenderness, I cannot describe to you. I never saw such a glance from woman before or since.” St. Julian rose, and began pacing the carpet before me, as he spoke, more rapidly.