“Many changes have come since, but I have steadily refused to marry except for love. I have lost my fortune and my pride has increased. I would not enter a family which did not appreciate me enough to be proud of the alliance or which would think it was honoring me in receiving me. I have felt in this way a long time, and have looked upon a single life as my lot. My duties, true, would be fewer and not so sweet, perhaps, but none the less severe and exacting. Friendship I have regarded as my compensation, and I have wished to taste it with all the abandon of confidence. But you are leading me too far, and it is against that that I would protect myself. [Illustration: ROLAND DE LA PLATIÈRE. After the painting by Hesse. ] “I have seen in your strong, energetic, enlightened, practical soul, the stuff for a friend of first rank. I have been delighted to regard you as such, and to all the seriousness of friendship I wanted to add all the fervor of which a tender soul is capable. But you have awakened in my heart a feeling against which I believed myself armed. I have not concealed it. I showed it unreservedly and I expected you to give me the generous support which I needed. But far from sparing my weakness, you became each day rasher, and you have dared ask me the cause of my pensiveness, my silence, my pain. Sir, I may be the victim of my sentiments, but I will never be the plaything of any man.... I cannot make an amusement of love. For me it is a terrible passion which would submerge my whole being and which would influence all my life. Give me back friendship or fear—to force me to see you no more. “O my friend, why disturb the beautiful relation between us? My heart is rich enough to repay you in tenderness for all the privations it imposes upon you.... Spare me the greatest good that I know, the only one which makes life tolerable to me,—a friend sincere and faithful. I have not enough of your philosophy or I have too much of another which does not resemble yours in this point only, to give myself up inconsiderately to a passion which for me would be transport and delirium. “My friend, come back more moderate, more reserved, let us cherish zealously, joyfully, and confidently the tastes which can strengthen the sweet tie which unites us....” This letter threw Roland into confusion. He had taken her at her word when she suggested an intimate friendship. He had taken her at her word when she told him her affection was becoming love. He had been, perhaps, too fervent, but how was one to regulate so delicate a situation? He wrote her a piteous and helpless sort of letter in which he declared he was unhappy. Manon replied in a way which did not help him particularly in his quandary: