You talk of bringing Mary and me together again. Would it answer, I wonder? Sentiment is one thing, but practicability is another. Having told you that I loved Mary, I have said all that either woman or man can say. Likings change and alter, but love is for ever. Yet, whether we could live together, whether she could trust me, whether she would understand the past, and feel how little I wished or intended to interfere with her, I cannot tell; unless she could, it would almost be better to leave us as we are. So long as a woman is young, as Mary is, it is doubtful and dangerous, I am afraid, to try any relationships but those that are quite natural. She is with you, you dearest, kind friend, as if she were your own child. You can do her nothing but good; but I am not so very much older than she is. I am older--centuries older--but not to outward appearance; and can you not suppose a state of things in which the last chapter of our lives might be, one way or other, repeated again? I say this not with any sort of vanity, Heaven knows, but with fear and trembling. For I should be happier with her--far happier--but not if she came to me with a single doubt in her mind, a single thought which was uncertain or suspicious. Do not tell her this one difficulty which seems to me to stand in our way, but judge for us both what is best. I want her for myself and for my boy. We belong to each other, and no one else in the world belongs to us. How often I long for her when I am sitting alone! How many things I have in my mind to say to her! But not unless it would be well for her, to whom anything may happen. Nothing that I know of, except through her or my baby, can now happen to me. CHAPTER VIII