each fashioned apart for ever, and built about with such an iron wall of individual life that all the force of time and change cannot so much as shake it.  And while I am myself, and yet in any shape endure, of this be certain—­the love that is a part of me will endure also.  Oh, herein is set my hope—­nay, not my hope, for hope upon the tongue whispers doubt within the heart, but the most fixed unchanging star of all my heaven.  It is not always night, for the Dawn is set beyond the night; and oh, my heart’s beloved, at daybreak we shall meet again!

“Oh!  Arthur, even now I long for the purer air and flashing sympathies of that vast Hereafter, when the strong sense of knowledge shall scarcely find a limit ere it overleaps it; when visible power shall radiate from our being, and living on together through countless Existences, Periods, and Spheres, we shall progress from majesty to ever-growing majesty!  Oh, for the day when you and I, messengers from the Seat of Power, shall sail high above these darkling worlds, and, seeing into each other’s souls, shall learn what love’s communion is!

“Do not think me foolish, dear, for writing to you thus.  I do not wish to make you the victim of an outburst of thought that you may think hysterical.  But perhaps I may never be able to write to you again in this way; your wife, if you are married, may be jealous, or other things may occur to prevent it.  I feel it, therefore, necessary to tell you my inmost thoughts now whilst I can, so that you may always remember them during the long coming years, and especially when you draw near to the end of the journey.  I hope, dearest Arthur, that nothing will ever make you forget them, and also that, for the sake of the pure love you will for ever bear me, you will always live up to your noblest and your best, for in this way our meeting will be made more perfect.

“Of course it is possible that you may still be free, and, after you know that I am not quite so much to blame as you may have thought, still willing to give your name to me.  It is a blessed hope, but I scarcely dare to dwell upon it.

“The other day I was reading a book Mr. Fraser lent me, which took my fancy very much, it was so full of contradictions.  The unexpected always happened in it, and there was both grief and laughter in its pages.  It did not end quite well or quite badly, or, rather it had no end, and deep down underneath the plotless story, only peeping up now and again when the actors were troubled, there ran a vein of real sorrow and sad, unchanging love.  There was a hero in this odd book which was so like life—­who, by the way, was no hero at all, but a curious, restless creature who seemed to have missed his mark in life, and went along looking for old truths and new ideas with his eyes so fixed upon the stars that he was always stumbling over the pebbles in his path, and thinking that they were rocks.  He was a sensitive man, too, and as weak as he was