“How I love you, my own sweet little Diana! You are to me the most adorable girl in the world,--and if ever I do an unkind thing to you or wrong you in any way may God punish me for a treacherous brute! My one desire in life is to make you happy.” The other letter, written some years later, was rather differently expressed. “I am quite sure you will understand that time has naturally worked changes, in you as well as in myself, and I am obliged to confess that the feelings I once had for you no longer exist. But you are a sensible woman, and you are old enough now to realise that we are better apart.” “You are old enough now,” was the phrase that jarred upon Diana’s inward sense, like the ugly sound of a clanking chain in a convict’s cell. “You are old enough now.” Well, it was true!--she was “old enough,”--but she had taken this “oldness” upon her while faithfully waiting for her lover. And he had been the first to punish her for her constancy! It was very strange. Indeed, it was one of those many things that had brought her to her chronic state of wonderment. The great writers,--more notably great poets, themselves the most fickle of men,--eulogised fidelity in love as a heavenly virtue. Why then, when she had practised it, had she been so sorely rewarded? Yet, since the rupture of her engagement, and the long and bitter pain she had endured over this breaking up of all she had held most dear, her many studies and her careful reading had gradually calmed and strengthened her nature, and she was able to admit to herself that there were possibly worse things than the loss of a heartless lover who might have proved a still more heartless husband. She felt no resentment towards him, and his memory now scarcely moved her to a thrill of sorrow or regret. She only asked herself why it had all happened? Of course there was no answer to such a query,--there never is. And she was “old enough”--yes, quite “old enough” to put away all romance and sentimentality. Yet, as she walked slowly in the garden among the roses, and watched the sea sparkling in the warm after-glow of what had been an exceptionally fine sun setting, the old foolish craving stirred in her heart again. The scent of the flowers, the delicate breathings of the summer air, the flash of the sea-gulls’ white wings skimming over the glittering sand pools,--all these expressions of natural beauty saddened while they entranced her soul. She longed to be one with them, sharing their life, and imparting to others something of their joy. “They never grow old!” she said, half aloud. “Or if they do, it is not perceived. They seem always the same--always beautiful and vital.”