"Your dear, long letter from Mexico," she wrote, "I gave to uncle to read. He is always teasing me, because I assert that the letters of two lovers are written to be read by two pairs of eyes only. It was not possible, he declared, that an epistle of sixteen closely-written pages, like your last, could be a mere love-letter; no human being could stand such a thing, and we no longer lived, thank God, in that paradise of letter-writers--the time of Werther. So I showed him the Mexican letter, and he gave it back to me with one of his most comical faces. He declared he had never before come across such a lover; here he was giving a detailed description of a charming young girl, passing from one handsome woman to another, as if he could think of nothing that would give greater pleasure to his far-off sweetheart. That was certainly rather the opposite of a love-letter; but if I was content to make the acquaintance of all these Paquitas, Chatitas, and Mariquitas, he would not begrudge me the pleasure, and congratulated me upon my slight disposition to jealousy, which, to be sure, was a very useful trait for me to have in the case of a traveler of this sort. "I laughed, and he went off to his club, shaking his head. "But then I grew very serious, and looked into my own heart and tried to make out why it was that I really did not feel the faintest spark of jealousy. Perhaps because there is room for nothing in my heart but my love for you; neither for conceit, nor fear, nor desires, nor doubt. I have never stopped to consider _why_ it was that we two should have loved one another. It _was_ so; I felt that even more strongly than I did my own existence. And for that very reason it seems to me inconceivable that it can ever be any different. For you do not love me because I am the most beautiful, the wisest, the wittiest, or the most lovable person that you have ever seen, but because I am _I_ the one person, with all that I have and all that I lack, that you will never find a second time. So, though you may find many beyond the sea who are more charming, more attractive, more brilliant, you will never find me again; and because I know that, I can, when evening comes, lay your sixteen-page letter from over the ocean under my pillow, and very quietly go to sleep and dream of you, without feeling any desire to snatch you, with poison and dagger, from the attractions of some olive-colored Creole.