And what, then, was the message for which this Hugh Robertson desired such a wide audience? Mr. Black read the manuscript attentively, and then, after a brief study of the man, as his character was indicated in his note and his handwriting, he constructed his theory of the case. Here was a man, strong, able, successful, surrounded by conditions of prosperity and ease which flatly contradicted the case of Ethel Ross--and yet the keynote to this soul, too, was the all-powerful one of love. Between the two there was a difference, however, for the woman’s heart was attuned to aspiration and the man’s to renunciation. The message from the woman’s heart was that every trial and earthly evil could be borne without complaint, so long as there remained the possibility of the fulfilment of ideal love. The message from the man’s heart was that the fulfilment of ideal love was so well-nigh impossible a thing (though every other fulfilment which the world could give was scant joy in comparison with it), that it behooved one to learn earnestly the lesson of resignation without cynicism. The man’s voice was the stronger of the two, and his message was the nobler, but then there was every indication of its being the outcome of a maturer mind. It had been as Mr. Black laid down the second manuscript that he had uttered the exclamation already recorded, and the thing that struck him as so very extraordinary was the subtle sort of answering to each other’s needs which these two manuscripts conveyed to his mind. The man’s was as obviously a self-revelation as the woman’s; and the perspicacious editor shrewdly suspected him of being a very shy man, who would not have been able to express himself fully and freely in his own person, and who had therefore sought this means of saying what he had to say to as large an audience as he could reach. Mr. Black could not quite explain why he felt it so, but, in reality, he was convinced that this was a man of influence and importance, who lived a life of active labor, in which he was able to express himself objectively, but who was now, for the first time, giving his soul a subjective expression in this manuscript. The address given by Hugh Robertson was in a great and populous city. It was also in a locality not very far away from the little town from which Ethel Ross had dated her letter. Mr. Black reflected on this fact rather wistfully. He wished that this man and this woman could meet. He could hardly have been the judge of fiction that he was, without a certain amount of romance in him; but, on the other hand, he had an equal amount of common sense, and he saw that the obvious and practical duty of the present moment was to guard the confidence of his contributors in the discharge of his functions as editor.