That day Clara had received one of Susie’s long, nicely-written letters, detailing little village events, the mild flirtations of the twin sisters, the doctor’s sayings and doings, the ways and speeches of “little Min,” and her own schemes and hopes for the future. “Dear Susie!” thought Clara; “she knows I am unhappy, and so writes me every day, hoping to bring some little sunshine into my life. Why, even Susie shows more love for me than Albert. What is there in his letter? Only the cool assurance that he has not changed—the stupid persistence that the sun is shining, when all the world is wrapped in Cimmerian gloom. My father would never consider me weak enough to be deceived by such shallow pretence.” Clara had gone to her room to answer Albert’s letter. For this purpose she had given up joining a moonlight excursion to _Diana’s Baths_, a wonderful freak of Nature where, in the solid granite, the trickling water-drops of ages have smoothly carved out vessels of all imaginable shapes, not a few greatly resembling the common bathing-tub. All these vessels were overflowing with the crystal water of a mountain-spring. Clara sat until far into the night, trying to write to Albert, and knowing all the while that it would be just as well to be silent. And yet she did write a long letter—a cry from an overladen soul that ought to have moved a heart of stone. “I know not why I write,” she said, toward the last of the letter. “My reason rebels against these frantic attempts to patch together the fragments of the golden bowl. Love wants its perfect illusions—wants and will have nothing else, these failing. No wonder you try to deceive me when you see how my health and strength, and all the little beauty I ever had, are failing under the griefs I have borne so long. Believe me, dearest, I _do_ know I am wrong to write you when I must burden you with sorrow you are powerless to alleviate. I cannot blame you in my heart. It is not your fault that Clara’s love has ceased to be the most precious thing in the world to you.” To this there soon came the following reply: “MY DEAR CLARA:—I wish you would give up studying the death of love, and study its life. You brood over imaginary troubles too much. I wish you could have children, but that will never happen, because you are too unquiet in your temperament. You have no real cause for unhappiness. My regard for Ella in no way interferes with that for my wife. You ought to know that all real love ennobles. Albert never takes back any love that he once freely gives, and my love for you has never suffered the slightest change. Love is not a suffocating warmth, or at least, it should not be. “I send you some valerian powders. Take one every night at bed-time. I am obliged to go out of town for a day or two on pressing business, and then, dearest, I shall be with you in the flesh, as I am ever in spirit.