I laughed again. "But you do not," I said. "I have told you I love you and would marry you. You cannot, you say. Then that ends all between us. I love you too much to be able to give you only what you give me." "We cannot marry," he repeated: "it would be ruin to both of us." "Go away!" I said: "I would rather be alone." I was spent, and felt feeble and weak. "Let me tell you, first, that I admire you, esteem you, infinitely: let me say this before I go; and you will think of me kindly." He said this pleadingly. I looked at him wonderingly. Did he not _yet_ know how much I loved him? My courage and pride were ebbing fast away. Faintly I said, "Before you go kneel down in front of me, and let me touch your forehead with my lips." He did so, and I bent forward and took his head in both my hands and kissed it. Somehow as I did it the strange thought came to me that if I had ever had a son, just so I have kissed his head. It was a yearning feeling, with such tenderness in it that my heart seemed dissolving. Many times. I kissed it and held it, and then, "Good-bye, my only love," I said. "I could have loved you very well." His eyes were wet with tears as he raised his head. "I shall never forget you: you are nobleness itself," he said. "God bless and prosper you, Miss Linton!" Then he went. That is all, all, and life is where it was a month ago; only, "I wear my rue with a difference." He was my inferior. I was higher and nobler and purer than he, but I loved him, and the greatest joy I could know would have been to lead my life with him. So it is over, and this book had best be put away. I will go back to my old life, and see what I can make of it. I am glad to have known what love meant: I shall be gladder after a while, when this ache is over. If he could but have loved me as I loved him--if he could! But he could not, and it was not to be. I must learn to be again a strong-minded woman. _Letter from Henry Lawrence to George Manning._ DEAR GEORGE: I'm off for Europe to-morrow. I behaved _like a man_ and broke the whole thing off. She behaved like a man too, told me how much she loved me, and then accepted the position. I feel like a girl who has jilted a fellow, and it's a very poor way to feel. Never flirt with a strong-minded woman. I believe she cared for me, and I think very likely when I'm fifty I shall think I was a fool not to have braved it out and married her. I'm sure if I don't think it then, I shall when I reach the next world; but then, like the girl in Browning's poem, "she will pass, nor turn her face." I feel very blue, and I think I'd better ask Alice to marry me. Yours, H.L. MARSHALL NEIL. THE KING OF BAVARIA.