"This letter is my last. You may write to me just once. Please do, and put your answer in the pea-shooter, which still stands as before in the corner of the balcony. Ah! indeed, I shall have no peace till I know that our souls are united by the same desires. Good-bye, and when you come to meals, be sure you make no secret reference to what has been. It would only be painful to me, and I should doubt your good faith. "Always yours in true sisterly affection, "L. v. M." "Gracious Friend and Lady, "The profound emotions I have experienced since my last interview with our honoured Fraeulein von Schwertfeger are only deepened by your most kind lines. I feel a great impulse to perform deeds of atonement never yet attempted. I am ready to heap scorn and contumely on the seven deadly sins. I will take as example all the paragons of virtue the world has ever known, and will try to find in the lofty renunciation you demand of me that undiluted happiness which is the only kind devoid of the sting of remorse--an advantage which cannot have much weight with one so fatally constituted that he has heard of such a thing but never felt it. "Thus, dearest and most charming of women, farewell! We certainly had a good time. I can swear to this without committing perjury. Should you require more pledges for the future, I can also swear, first, to abhor alcohol; second, to shun the fair sex like the plague; third, to devote to the Encyclopaedia of Agriculture unremitting love and attention, two volumes of seven hundred and twenty pages each notwithstanding. "Once more, farewell! The ladder of my hopes, which I have climbed for the last time, shall find a wintry grave under fir cones and branches. When the times comes, may it rise therefrom to greet a new spring. "Till then, I kiss in all constancy your slim and refreshingly large hand. "Yours, "Already reformed, "Walter von Prell." Lilly found this letter, on the morning but one after the foregoing events, stuffed in the mouth of the pea-shooter, which reposed innocently against the balcony glass doors. It cannot be said that it gave her unlimited satisfaction. There were expressions in it that raised scepticism with regard to the sincerity of his conversion. Yet his assurances of amendment were so frank and concise, one could not doubt that the sentiment that prompted him to make them was genuine. It was only that he could not give up the incorrigible levity with which he expressed himself. Those who loved him must tolerate this eccentricity, whether they liked it or not. She kissed the letter and put it inside her blouse, that it might rest there comfortably for a little while before being torn up.