And I trembled to find that what space in her heart was not filled by the remembrance of her ever-beloved mother and the image of her father (one of the noblest and best of men) enshrined the ridiculous figure of a small boy in a white silk hat and an Eton jacket. And that small boy was I! Then came a dreadful twelvemonth that I was fain to leave a blank--the twelvemonth during which her girlish fancy for her husband lasted--and then her life was mine again forever! And _my_ life! The life of a convict is not, as a rule, a happy one; his bed is not generally thought a bed of roses. Mine was! If I had been the most miserable leper that ever crawled to his wattled hut in Molokai, I should also have been the happiest of men, could sleep but have found me there, and could I but sleeping have been the friend of sleeping Mary Seraskier. She would have loved me all the more! She has filled my long life of bondage with such felicity as no monarch has ever dreamed, and has found her own felicity in doing so. That poor, plodding existence I led before my great misadventure, and have tried to describe--she has witnessed almost every hour of it with passionate interest and sympathy, as we went hand in hand together through each other's past. She would at any time have been only too glad to share it, leaving her own. I dreaded the effect of such a sordid revelation upon one who had lived so brilliantly and at such an altitude. I need have had no fear! Just as she thought me an "angelic hero" at eight years old, she remained persuaded all through her life that I was an Apollo--a misunderstood genius--a martyr! I am sick with shame when I think of it. But I am not the first unworthy mortal on whom blind, undiscriminating love has chosen to lavish its most priceless treasures. Tarapatapoum is not the only fairy who has idealized a hulking clown with an ass's head into a Prince Charming; the spectacle, alas! is not infrequent. But at least I have been humbly thankful for the undeserved blessing, and known its value. And, moreover, I think I may lay claim to one talent: that of also knowing by intuition when and where and how to love--in a moment--in a flash--and forever! Twenty-five years! It seems like a thousand, so much have we seen and felt and done in that busy enchanted quarter of a century. And yet how quickly the time has sped! And now I must endeavor to give some account of our wonderful inner life--_a deux_--a delicate and difficult task. There is both an impertinence and a lack of taste in any man's laying bare to the public eye--to any eye--the bliss that has come to him through the love of a devoted woman, with whose life his own has been bound up.