I loved her--love her still. Will she _know_ what these words mean, when she finds them here? I cannot tell. They are enough for me. Not for you are they written, ball-room lounger, whispering of endless devotion between every qaudrille; not to you, proud beauty, taking and absorbing declarations as you would an ice; not for you, chattering monkey of the Champs Elyseés, raving of your _grande passion_ for Eloise, so _charmante_, so _spirituelle_; nor for you, Eloise aforesaid, with your devilish devices, stringing hearts in your girdle as Indians do scalps; not for you, dancing Spaniard, with your eternal castagnets, whispering just one word to your dark-eyed señorita, as you hand her another perfumed cigarette; not for you, lounging Italian, hissing intrigues under the shadow of an Athenian portico, or stealing after your veiled incognita, as her shadow flits over the place where the blood of Cæsar dyed the floor of the Capitol, or where the knife of Virginius flashed in the summer sun--not for one of you, for I have seen and despise you all. To you all love is a sealed book, which you shall never open--a tree of knowledge that will never turn into a curse for you--a beautiful serpent that, as you gaze upon its changing hues, will never sting you to the death. I never told her. I would wait for hours to see her pass, if she went out alone--but I never told her. I would trace her footsteps where she had taken her daily walk; I would wait beneath her window at night, to see but her shadow upon the blind, until she put out her lamp, and left the stars and myself the only watchers there--but I never told her. I would lay flowers in her way, happy if she wore them on her bosom, or wreathed them in her hair, as she sometimes would--but she never knew from whom they came. I sickened at my heart for her; I pined, oh! how I pined for her, and worshipped her as a saint, the hope, the glory, the heaven of my life--but I never told her. Did she love me? No. And, while I loved, I feared her. She never made me her companion, never took my arm; would always sit opposite me in the carriage instead of by my side; if in a game of forfeits, I forced the embrace I had won, she would struggle with tears of anger, though she had given her cheek to William with a blush but a few minutes before. If I had not been her abject slave, I could have torn her in pieces. Alas! alas! we were but boys, and she a girl still. How many, long years I have suffered since then!