Therefore, I saw Jessie again--and yet again after that. Why should I not confess it?--or, after what I have already told, what is there left for me to confess, at all? For now, at last, I began to acknowledge to myself that it was not mere friendship or esteem I felt, but, rather, the more overpowering passion of real love. Gone, like a thin veil of vapor, were all my sophistries about a limited Platonic interest; my dread of incongruous association; my resolves against possible rashnesses; my fear of the world or its senseless gossip; my prudence, or my self-restraint! These all seemed to vanish in a day; and, yielding myself, slavishly, a willing captive to bright eyes and silvery tones, upon one fine morning I passed the Rubicon of safety, and offered her my hand and heart. But, to my sore dismay, she only softly shook her head. "You do not love me, then?" I murmured. I spoke not merely with sorrow and disappointment, but with something of wounded pride--feeling mortified that she had not at once accepted my devotion. Certainly, it had seemed to me, all along, that I was not disagreeable to her; and there was no doubt that in her manner, at least, she had always cordially welcomed my approach, and taken pleasure in my company. "I do not know--I hardly yet can tell!" she faintly said, drawing her hand from mine. "To me, you are my best and dearest friend; perhaps, the only one whom I can really call my friend. I know how glad I always feel when you come hither; how lonely I am while you stay away. But this I do not think is love--the real, true love which I should wish to feel." "But can it never be?" I pleaded. "How can I tell? It might come to that, at last; and yet--" She ceased, and there came over her face a strange, dead look at the sea before her--a straining gaze, as though she would fix her eyes far beyond, in another hemisphere, oblivious of the present. "Yet tell me, Jessie, have I a rival? This, at least, you might let me know. I will not go further, nor will I ask his name." For a moment she did not answer: still sitting, with that strange, rapt, straining gaze, and with an unconscious, mechanical motion, rolling the little sand pebbles down the side of the rock.