in her life that the sweet follies of girlhood have not been hers.  Shall I say that I cannot help feeling her innocence and inexperience make her more attractive?  I am not sure, even, that they do not balance her self-reliance and independence, which certainly repel me.  All this I did not dream of at first.  I am not a scoundrel or a coxcomb.  It came to me the other afternoon all at once, when she threw her arms about my neck.  I have been selfish, and perhaps stupid.  “Why not marry her?” you say.  I have asked myself that question, and this is my answer:  No passion in the world could make me insensible to the humiliation of her career, and I should be obliged not only to accept it in the past, but to recognize it in the future.  My wife must be my social equal and the natural associate of high-bred women.  I must be able to take any man by the throat who looks at or speaks of her as does not please me.  This woman’s character, intellect, manners and appearance are public property for all purposes of criticism and comment.  She is unsexed.  My wife must be dependent on me, clinging to me.  This woman has always stood, and will always stand alone; and yet I have thought that she was capable of such deep, strong, concentrated feeling that the man who owned her heart might do with her as he liked.  This, I admit, has tempted me to think of marriage, for, after all, George, it would be a luxury to be very much loved.  This woman would love a man in another fashion from that which prevails in society.

But I have put the idea away from me, and here I am, determined not to marry her, and yet feeling that I have unintentionally wronged her.  I have not been near her these seven days.  I know she expects me—­she has every right to expect me—­but I will not go till I have decided what to say and do.  I am too weak to go otherwise.  Write to me, George, and advise me; and remember that she is not like the women of whom we have both known so many.  She has no more idea of flirting than had Hippolyta queen of the Amazons or Zenobia queen of Palmyra—­those two strong-minded women of old days.  I am joking, but I assure you I am not jolly.  I am afraid, George, that she truly loves me, and, unsexed though she be, love has made a woman of her, and I fear is unmanning me.

  Yours always,
  HENRY LAWRENCE.

P.S.  I open my letter to say that it is too late for you to write when you receive this:  it will be over.  I have just got a note from her asking to see me.  I shall speak frankly, but I feel like a hound.  As ever, H.L.

Journal.

Dec. 11.  I am resolved to write it all down as it happened.  I wrote him a note this afternoon, and this evening he came—­handsome, pale and quiet.  He walked up to me, took my hand in his, pressed it and let it go.  He did not wait for me to speak, fortunately, for I could not have spoken:  I could not have commanded my voice.  He said—­oh so quietly and steadily!—­“I should have come to see you to-night, I think, if you had not asked me:  I had so much to say.”