"I will not attempt to recall the events of that happy time to your memory. I loved you with all my heart and soul, and I know that you loved me. If it is any comfort to you to know it, let me tell you that I never doubted your love for me, even at the moment when you wounded me most deeply. But there is one thing I ought to tell you, and that is why I did not then inform you of all that you now know. I did not conceal it from any false shame about my past or my religion, but simply because I never thought of it. You were my first love, and my sad restless heart found rest and happiness in you. I shall always be grateful to you for that short time of unalloyed happiness. First love knows nothing of the past, and does not look forward to the future. The German poet was right when he wrote, 'First love does not know that it must die, as a child does not know what death is, although it may often hear of it.' My love was so great that I did not guess that your love might change when you learned that a Jewish mother had borne me, and that I had been a poor Talmudist. It was not because you were the Graefin Jadwiga Bortynska that I loved you, but because you were you--a noble high-minded woman, whose heart beat in response to mine. I could never have felt a different kind of love than this, for the experience of life had made me grave and proud. What separates us now, and must separate us for ever, is that you were not what I thought you, that you could not rise above the prejudices of your station--it is that, and that alone.... "I did not just come to this conviction," he went on, his voice once more sounding clear and full, "during the long years that have passed since we parted; I felt it even in that dark hour when I read the letter in which you wrote, 'If you are really a Jew, if rumor tells the truth about your past life, all is over between us now and for ever.' Even then I knew that the breach was irreparable, and that our love was a blunder; so I did not do as another in my position might have done, I did not try to appeal to what little love for me might still remain in your heart--I went away.