heart, and to remodel your criticism. But I am saying not a word of what is most in my thoughts. In two days I shall set out for a trip to the South which will bring me to Morningtown. Will you turn away in horror if you see a wretched creature hobbling with cloven hoof up the scented lane of your village? For sweet charity's sake, for your own sweeter sake, believe that his heart is full of love however wrong his mind may be. ----- [1] Much of the routine matter in regard to reviewing has been omitted from these letters. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Second Part which shows how the editor visits Jessica in the country, and how love and philosophy sometimes clash. XVII PHILIP TO JESSICA WRITTEN AFTER RETURNING FROM MORNINGTOWN MY DEAR MISS DOANE: It is all different and the morning has forgotten to return since I left you where your village meets the great world. Have you kept God's common dayspring imprisoned among your garden trees and flowers? What shall I say? What shall I not say? Only this, that I gave my happiness into your hands and you have broken it and let it drop to the ground. See what a shipwreck I have suffered of all my dreams. These long years of solitary reading and study I have been gathering up in my imagination the passions and joys and hopes of a thousand dead lovers,--the longing of Menelaus for Helen, the outcry of Catullus for Lesbia, the worship of Dante for Beatrice--all these I have made my own, believing that some day my love of a woman should be rendered fair in her eyes by these borrowed colours; and now I have failed and lost; and what I would give, you have accounted as light and insufficient. Is there no speech left to tell you all the truth? I am a little bewildered, and have not been able to pluck up heart of courage. Write me some word of familiar consolation; do not quite shut the door upon me until my eyes grow accustomed to this darkness. All the light is with you, and the beauty that God has given the world, all the meaning of human life,--and I turn my back on this and go out into the night alone. Dear girl, I would not utter a word of reproach. I know that my love, which seemed to me so good, may be as nothing to you, is indeed not worthy of you, for you are more than all my dreams--and yet it was all that I had. I shall learn perhaps to write to you as a mere reviewer of books;--the irony of it. XVIII JESSICA TO PHILIP MY DEAR MR. TOWERS: