nature has a dozen sides to be satisfied; he is ambitious, he loves art, or money, or his dirty fellow-men. All very well, you say; without such bent, souls would be cramped and torpid. Ah, but meantime the altar-fire dies down! If she loves him truly,-- "And if, ah woe! she loves alone," she tends it with her poor, weak hands; but no longer are the ministrants two. The little observances of love are forgotten, or they degenerate into a meaningless form more pitiful than silence. You grant, I suppose, that there is a higher life to be sought, one of aspiration, or holy companionship in great deeds and truer speech,--but as I live by bread, I doubt whether husbands and wives can keep that track together. You are a young Galahad with Lancelot's heart. I believe in you, I care mightily for you in a certain way; but you are a man, and none of the weaknesses of mankind are foreign to you. I am a woman, and, hard as my heart may be, it is made to be broken. Therefore say no more to me about this foolish fever of your youth. Believe me, it is a malady incident to the time. It will pass, in this present form, sometime to be renewed. You will love other women, and one day the unexpressive she will appear who has never once peeped into these worldly text-books. Hand in hand, she and you will learn the lesson together. It may be bitter, it may not. There are those, I believe, whom the gods forget; but I have no faith in myself escaping their thrusts. [Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose_]