The letter I had written to Conny remained unanswered. Every hour of the days that followed, I looked forward to receiving her answer. Her silence mortified me. I thought her cruel to neglect me, knowing what my feelings were. I pored over her picture, afflicting my common sense with all manner of silly questions. She had given me quite enough encouragement to lead me to believe that she was very nearly in love with me, and what I wanted to know was, Was she a flirt? and had she humoured my passion only to make an ass of me? I had confidently reckoned upon receiving an answer to my letter. Had her father forbidden her to write? No; that was improbable. He certainly would not wish her to treat me with rudeness. I grew jealous, uneasy, angry. Suppose all the time she had been allowing me to make love to her, she was pledged to Curling, was corresponding with him, was meeting him! How detestable to be tricked! How odious to pour your soft adoration into the ears of a woman who is laughing in her sleeve at your nonsense, and thinking, at the very moment you consider yourself most eloquent, how much better the other fellow expresses the same sentiments! Lovers can never be ridiculous in each other’s eyes, if both are in earnest. But if one is insincere, then the other is inevitably absurd. So two mad people explaining to each other, the one his claims to the English throne, the other his claims to the moon as a family estate, listen with gravity, embrace with sympathy, and part with mutual admiration. But a lunatic, talking his nonsense to a sane man, is pitied and despised. Oh, who that has been in love hasn’t suffered? Where is he? I would walk ten miles on the hottest July day to behold him. I say, it is impossible to love and not to suffer. Thy goddess is a divinity hedged about with furze, and whatever be thy fortune with her, inevitably art thou bound to carry away scars and blisters and wounds. Nay, madam, I never said that these sufferings, these agonies, were confined to one sex. _You_ take your share; _you_, too, have your lacerations, your sleepless nights, your heavy eyelids. There is a Jack for every Jill--a Jill for every Jack. But do your sufferings mitigate ours? Does Sylvia weeping over Alexis’ cruel marriage with Phyllis, comfort Phœbus, who blubbers over Delia’s engagement to Hylas? Oh, this is a vale of tears! let us silence recrimination--and weep, if not in each other’s arms, at least for one another.