"Lastly, my dear old Dick has been making love to me, just as he did when I was fifteen and he was seventeen, going about with my father, practising and playing. Such a Conservative--so full of prejudices is Dick. I confess to you, dear Hilarie, I would rather marry Dick than anything else. We should never have any money--Dick gives away all he gets. He will not put by. 'If I am ill,' he says, 'take me to the hospital.' 'If I die,' he says, 'bury me in the hedge, like the gipsy folk.' He never wants money, and I should sometimes go on tramp with him, and we should sit in the woods, and march along the roads, and hear the skylark sing, and yearn for the unattainable, and go on crying for we know not what, like the little children. Oh, delightful! And Dick is always sweet and always good--except, perhaps, when he speaks of Humphrey, who has angered him by cold and superior airs. Dick is a philosopher, except on that one side. When I think of marrying Dick, dear Hilarie, my heart stands still. For then I get a most lovely dream. I close my eyes to see it better. It is a most charming vision. There is a long road with a broad strip of turf on either side, and a high hedge for shade and flowers, goodly trees at intervals; a road which runs over the hills and down the valleys and along brooks; crosses bridges, and has short cuts through fields and meadows; overhead the lark sings; from the trees the yellow-hammer cries, 'A little bit of bread and no cheese;' clouds fly across the sky; all kinds of queer people pass along--vagrants, beggars, gipsies, soldiers,--just the common sort. On the springy turf at the side I myself walk, carrying the fiddle--in the middle of the road Dick tramps, going large and free; over his shoulders hangs the bag which contains all we want; now and then he bursts out singing as he goes. In the coppice we sit down on the trunk of a tree and take lunch out of a paper bag. Sometimes, when we are quite alone in a coppice, far away from the world, Dick takes his fiddle out of the case and plays to me, all alone, music that lifts me out of myself and carries me away, I know not whither. Who would not marry a great magician? And in my dream about Dick I am never tired. I never regret my lot--I never want money. Dick is never savage, like Humphrey--he despises no one; he is loved by everybody. Oh, Hilarie, I would ask for nothing--nothing better than to give myself to Dick, and to follow him and be his slave--his grateful slave! Is this love, Hilarie? Write to me, dear Hilarie, and tell me what I ought to do."