breathe nor move, but was literally petrified, rooted to the spot, and felt a fearful pain begin to burn in my breast. For I saw--I saw you. Oh, my God! I saw you come out of the hall, and move slowly through the lobby, passing within almost a yard of me, so that I could have stretched out my hand and touched you, so that, if I had whispered your name, you would have heard me, and saw you go down the stairs and disappear in the street. I stood there with wide, staring eyes and parted lips, like a man turned to stone. How shall I ever disentangle, and put before you in some sort of consecutive order, the great crowd of thoughts and emotions that suddenly, and all at the same time, broke loose in my heart and brain? In that brief interval--it could not have been more than a minute altogether--I lived through almost every thing that I have lived through since. It was all compressed into that minute. I shall try hard to give you some sort of an account of it, to make it as clear and as comprehensible as I can. But I know that, however hard I try, I shall only be able to give you a very meager and faint conception. If I could only see you, and speak to you--if for one moment I could kneel down at your feet, and touch your hand, and look into your face, and utter one long, deep sigh--oh, I should feel then as though I had in some degree expressed what was, and has been ever since, in my heart and mind. Sometimes, when I have listened to certain pieces of music, I have felt that in them was the expression for my unspeakable emotions. I have felt this about some of Chopin's impromptus and nocturnes--that if I could somehow make you hear them, you would somehow understand. Do you know the Impromptu in C-sharp minor? That sometimes seems to express almost perfectly my grief and passion and remorse and hopeless longing. But--but to touch your hand, and look into your eyes, and sob at your feet--I would be willing to die at the end of one minute spent that way. But see--see how I am compelled to sit here, away from you, and realize that never, never, so long as I live, shall I be allowed to approach you, or speak to you. Can you imagine the agony it is, to yearn with your whole soul to speak one word to a woman; to have your whole soul and heart and mind burdened with something that burns like fire, and will never cease burning until you have emptied soul and heart and mind at her feet; and to know that she is scarcely a mile distant from you, in the same city with you; and yet to know that if she were dead she would not be further removed from you, it could not be more impossible for you ever to approach her, ever to speak with her? Can you imagine that? Oh, sometimes I can not believe it--believe that facts can be so inexorable. Sometimes it seems against nature that a man's whole strength, whole life, can be concentrated in one single wish, and yet the fulfillment of that wish be absolutely beyond hope. It is too stupendous, too monstrous.