He began to write to her half-a-dozen times at least. He began indignantly--he began tenderly,--he upbraided--he remonstrated--his pen ran away with him. He had meant to use one class of words, and under his very eyes it employed another. He wrote her ever so many letters. He set before her all his passion--all his readiness to sacrifice himself--all the tortures he had suffered at the window of the bank seeing her come and go and having no share in her life. He told her what a chill blank had come over him at Fernwood--how he had felt that he was nothing to her. He told her what he had seen that morning. He was eloquent, pathetic, overwhelming. His own heart felt as if it must burst while he wrote; but as he read over each completed page, John had still so much good sense left that he dragged his stiff limbs from the sofa and put it in the fire. It was thus he occupied almost all the time he had to wait; and it was only just before his cab came to the door that he put into its envelope this letter, in which it will be seen he neither remonstrated nor upbraided, nor even gave her up. He could not give her up, and how could he accuse her? He accuse Kate! If she was guilty her heart would do that--if not---- But alas! the latter alternative was impossible; only for “utter courtesy,” for utter tenderness, he could not blame the woman he loved. “I do not know how to write,” he said, “though you tell me to write. Dear Kate, dearest Kate--you will always be dearest to me.--This may pass over, and be to you as the merest dream; but to me it must always be the centre and heart of my life. I don’t know what to say to you. I have not written, not out of lack of love, but lack of hope. If I could think I was any way necessary to you--if I could feel you wanted me--but your sweet life is so complete; and what is mine to be tacked on to it? I don’t know what to say. Silence seems the best. Dear! dearest! you are so bright that my heart fails me when I look at you. I drop down into the shade, and there seems nothing left for me but to keep still. I try to rouse myself with the thought of what you say--that you want me to write, that _you are anxious_--anxious about me! And you mean it, dear--you mean it, I know; but the words have a soft meaning to you different from their meaning to me. And you have no need of me, Kate. I feel it, and that takes the words out of my mouth, and all the courage out of my heart.