other women. And so far from being a misogynist, I care for as few men as women. You perhaps recall how much apart I kept myself from my fellow students, and how my father had to urge me to join them in the fencing and chess contests? Later, at the university, after you had left us, I entered more eagerly into the two pastimes, and succeeded in making myself a skilled swordsman. As for chess, I learned to play the game you tested last October on the veranda of My Fancy. You looked courteously grave when, after our initial battle, I had to ask from you the odds of a pawn, and never dreamed that I fathomed your secret triumph over your victory. You are so delightfully human and womanly, after all, Maizie, to any one who can read your thoughts. It is a pleasure to see your happiness in the consciousness of your own power, and I grudge you victory over me no more than over other men. Yet while you play better chess, I think you could not conquer me quite as easily if I were not much more interested in studying the player than the play. Perhaps but for you I should have made friends, for later, at Leipzig, despite my shyness and studiousness, I seemed fairly popular; but so long as I had you I cared for no other friend, and after our separation I could form no new tie. Neither in love nor in friendship have you ever had a rival in my heart.

Our happiness ended the day when Johann, the poor factotum of our lodging-place, found us in the castle park and summoned us back to the house, where my father and Mr. Walton were awaiting you. The news that we were to be parted came so suddenly that we could not believe it. I stood in stunned silence, while you declared that you would not go with your uncle; even in that terrible moment speaking more like a queen issuing orders than like a rebel resisting authority. We both appealed to my father, and the tears stood in his eyes as he told us we must be parted. Mr. Walton sat with the cool and slightly bored look that his worldly face wears so constantly, and I presume it was impossible for him to understand our emotion.

Your luggage had been packed while we were being summoned, and I carried your bag down to the carriage, in the endeavor to do you some last little service. We did not even go through the form of a farewell, but, tearless and speechless, held each other's hands till my father gently separated us. To this day the snap of a whip causes me to catch my breath, it brings back so vividly the crack with which Mr. Walton's cabman whipped up his horse. Fate was merciful, for she gave me no glimpse of the future, and so left me the hope that we should not be parted long. I question if the delicate lad of those days could have borne the thought that our separation, enforced by others, would in time be continued by you.

The life was too happy to last; and yet I do not know why I write that, for I do not believe that God's children are born to be wretched, and I would sooner renounce my faith in him than believe him so cruel to his own creations. The sadness and estrangement in my life are all of human origin, and mine, it seems to me, has been a fuller cup of bitterness than most men have to drink. Or am I only magnifying my own sufferings, and diminishing those of my fellow mortals? To the world I am a fortunate man, with promise of even greater success. Do all the people about me, who seem to be equally prosperous, bury away from sight some grief like mine that beggars joy?

Can you, Maizie, in the tide and triumph of your beauty and wealth, hide any such death-wound to all true happiness? Pray God you do not. Good-night, my darling.

IV

February 23. After you were gone I fled to my room, crawling under the window-seat, much as a mortally wounded animal tries to hide itself. Here my father found me many hours later, speechless and shivering. He drew me from my retreat, and I still remember the sting of the brandy as he poured it down my throat. Afterwards the doctor came, to do nothing; but all that night my father sat beside me, and towards morning he broke down my silence, and we talked together over the light which had gone out of our lives, till I fell asleep. He told me that the death of your two aunts had made you a great heiress, and rendered your continuance with us, in our poverty, impossible. "She's gone away out of our class, Donald," my father said sadly, "and in the change of circumstances her mother wouldn't have made me her guardian. It was better for all of us to let her uncle take her back to New York." Even in my own grief I felt his sorrow, and though he did not dodge my questions, I could see how the subject pained him, and avoided it thenceforth. How strangely altered my life would have been if I had insisted on knowing more!

The doctor came several times afterwards, for I did not rally as I should have done, and at last he ordered a year's cessation of studies and plenty of exercise. It was a terrible blow to me at the time, for I was on the point of entering the University of Leipzig; but now I can see it was all for the best, since the time given to our tours through Spain and Italy was well spent, and the delay made me better able to get the full value of the lectures. Moreover, that outdoor life added three inches to the height and seventeen pounds to the weight of the hitherto puny boy. For a time my father made my health his care, and insisted on my walking and fencing daily; but after that long holiday he need not have given it a thought, for I grew steadily to my present height, and while always of slender build, I can outwalk or outwork many a stockier man.

My university career was successful; it could hardly have failed to be, with my training. I fear that I became over-elated with my success, not appreciating how much it was due to my father's aid and to the kindness of two of my instructors. For my Ph. D. I made a study of the great race movements of the world, in which my predilection for philology, ethnology, and history gave me an especial interest. I so delighted my professor of philology by my enthusiasm and tirelessness that he stole long hours from the darling of his heart to aid me. (I need hardly add that I do not allude to Frau Jastrow, but to his Verb-Roots of Fifty-Two Languages and Dialects of Indo-Germanic Origin, to be published some day in seventeen volumes, quarto.) He even brought me bundles of his manuscript to read and criticise. Our relations were as intimate as were possible between a professor and a student, and despite his reputation for ill temper the only evidence he ever gave me of it was a certain querulousness over the gaps in human knowledge.

My doctor's thesis on A Study of the Influence of Religion in the Alienation and Mixture of Races—which, with a vanity I now laugh over, I submitted not merely in Latin, but as an original work in four other languages—was not only the delight of both my dear professors, but was well considered outside the university. At Jastrow's urging, poor Buchholtz printed editions in all five languages; and as only the German had any sale worth mentioning, he ever after looked gloomy at a mere allusion to the title. But though it earned me no royalties, it won me the Kellermann prize, given every fifth year for the best original work on an historical subject.

On our first arrival in Leipzig my father sought literary employment from the great publishers of that city of books, and soon obtained all the "review" and "hack" writing that he wished.