“See! I am romantic, too. I also quote Tennyson. You’ve borne up bravely, Susie, these last days, and by and by all will be right. I am going to find you a place with some patient of mine, as near here as possible.” Susie’s face beamed at this. She felt that she could not possibly stay much longer in the doctor’s house, for she knew how Mrs. Forest felt toward her. He left her no time to thank him before he added, “I trust you are cultivating a healthy contempt for your rascally lover?” “Do you think he will never, never care for Susie any more?” she asked. “See! he commences even this letter ‘_Dear Susie_,’” and she looked up inquiringly to the doctor, who answered, after a long pause: “What dry husks a hungry heart will feed upon! Pitiful, pitiful!” and the doctor uttered a heavy sigh. “Why, no; he cares nothing for you beyond a feeling of pity, which no one could possibly withhold who had any natural feeling. I say this because the sooner you give up all hope that his disaffection is an accident, the better it will be for you.” “Yet only so little while ago he told me I was all the world to him.” “And he wrote you often, didn’t he?” “Yes. Sometimes twice a day,” said Susie, smiling through her tears. “Well, when he did that he was in love. There is no sign of that delectable state, so constant. You may lay it down as a law, _if a man loves he writes_, and simply because he cannot avoid doing so. He _must_ be governed by the strongest impulse. When he is writing he does not know when to stop, for being away from an object that strongly attracts him, writing is the most effective solace. In fact, the amount a lover writes is a very good barometer of the pressure he is under from his passion.” “But might he not be so busy he could not write?” “He would take the hours for sleeping, because writing would be far pleasanter than sleeping. Of course there are accidents, serious illness, and so forth. I speak of natural, happy, passional attraction.” “Why, I have not written myself sometimes because, indeed, I loved him so much,” said Susie. “Ah! I was calculating the motives of my own sex. I doubt if the Devil himself could fathom all a woman’s motives.” “I am sorry you think so, sir,” said the serious little Susie. “I mean I could not write because I wanted so to keep his love, and feared to reproach him, feared to be too loving, feared and distrusted my power every way; and so I often tore up letter after letter—often brought them back from the post-office door, and did not write perhaps for days; and yet I loved him so, all the time, that I could not sleep.” “Poor child!” said the doctor, taking her hand. “Don’t you see you were but proving my rule, for in the first place you _did_ write continually, according to your own confession; and then you remember I said _happy_ passional attraction.” “Oh, yes. I see you are right. You are always right; but do you not think love may sometimes return when once it goes out of the heart?”