more merciful towards her. Poor woman! if she had ever dreamed of love the dream had been forgotten. She was ig norant of the fatal spell which had come upon us, and I did not detect my own passion until its reflection was thrown back to me from her innocent face. When I had discovered the truth, it was too late-too late, I mean, for her happiness, not too late for the honor of both our lives. I could not explain to her a danger which she did not suspect, nor could I embitter, by an enforced coldness, her few remaining happy days of our voyage. With a horrible fascination, I saw her drawing nearer and nearer the brink of knowledge, and my lips were sealed, that only could have attered the warning cry. Again I was called upon to suffer, but in a way I had never anticipated. The grief of betrayed love is tame, beside the despair of forbidden love. This new experience showed me how light was the load which I had already borne. On the one side, two hearts that recognized each other and would have been faithful to the end of time; on the other, a monstrous bond, which had only the sanction of human laws. I rebelled, in my very soul, against the mockery of that legal marriage, which is the basis of social virtue, forgetting that Good must voluntarily bind itself in order that Evil may not go free. The boundless tenderness towards her which had suddenly revealed itself must be stifled. I could not even press her hand warmly, lest some unguarded pulse should betray the secret; I scarcely dared look in her eyes, lest mine might stab her with the sharpness of my love and my sorrow in the same glance.

"It was all in vain. Some glance, some word, or touch of hand, on either side, did come, and the thin disguise was torn away forever. Then we spoke, for the consolation of speech seemed less guilty than the agony of silence. In the moonless nights of the Indian Ocean we walked the deck with hands secretly clasped, with silent tears on our cheeks, with a pang in our souls only softened by the knowledge that it was mutual. Neither of us, I think, then thought of disputing

our fate. But as the voyage drew near its end, I was haunted by wild fancies of escape. I could not subdue my nature to forego a fulfilment that seemed possible. We might find a refuge, I thought, in Java, or Celebes, or some of the Indian Isles, and once beyond the reach of pursuit what was the rest of the world to us? What was wealth, or name, or station? -they were hollow sounds to us now, they were selfish cheats, always. In the perverted logic of passion all was clear and fair.

"This idea so grew upon me that I was base enough to propose it to her-I who should have given reverence to that ignorance of the heart which made her love doubly sacred, strove to turn it into the instrument of her ruin! She heard me, in fear, not in indignation. Do not tempt me!' she cried, with a pitiful supplication; think of my children, and help me to stand up against my own heart!' Thank God I was not deaf to that cry of weakness; I was armed to meet resistance, but I was powerless against her own despairing fear of surrender. Thank God, I overcame the relentless selfishness of my sex! She took from my lips, that night, the only kiss I ever gave her-the kiss of repentance, not of triumph. It left no stain on the purity of her marriage vow. That was our true parting from each other. There were still two days of our voyage left, but we looked at each other as if through the bars of opposite prisons, with a double wall between. Our renunciation was complete, and any further words would have been an unnecessary pang. We had a melancholy pleasure in still being near each other, in walking side by side, in the formal touch of hands that dared not clasp and be clasped. This poor consolation soon ceased. The husband was waiting for her at Calcutta, and I purposely kept my state-room when we arrived, in order that I might not see him. I was not yet sure of myself.

"She went to Benares, and afterwards to Meerut, and I never saw her again. In a little more thar a year I heard she was dead: the fever of the country,' they said I was glad

leath was better for her than her life had been-now, * east, when "hat life had become a perpetual infidelity to her hears. Death purified the memory of my passion, and re me, perhaps, a sweeter resignation than if she had irst yielded to my madness. Sad and hopeless as was this episode of my life, it contained an element of comfort, and restored the balance which my first disappointment had destroyed. My grief for her was gentle, tender and consoling, and I never turned aside from its approaches. It has now withdrawn into the past, but its influence still remains, in this-that the desire for that fulfilment of passion, of which life has thus far cheated me, has not grown cold in my heart.

"There are some natures which resemble those plants that die after a single blossoming-natures in which one passion seems to exhaust the capacities for affection. I am not one of them, yet I know that I possess the virtue of fidelity. I know that I still wait for the fortune that shall enable me to manifest it. Do you, as a woman, judge me unworthy to expect that fortune? You are now acquainted with my history; try me by the sacred instincts of your own nature, and according to them, pardon or condemn me. I have revealed to you my dream of the true marriage that is possible-a dream that prevents me from stooping to a union not hallowed by perfect love and faith. Have I forfeited the right to indulge this dream longer? Would I be guilty of treason towards the virgin confidence of some noble woman whom God may yet send me, in offering her a heart which is not fresh in its knowledge, though fresh in its immortal desires? I pray you to answer me these questions? Do not blame your own truth and nobility of nature, which have brought you this task. Blame, if you please, my selfishness in taking advantage of them.

"I have now told you all I meant to confess, and might here close. But one thought occurs to me, suggested by the sudden recollection of the reform to which you have devoted yourself. I fear that all reformers are too much disposed to measure the actions and outward habits of the human race,

without examining the hidden causes of those actions. There is some basis in our nature for all general customs, both of body and mind. The mutual relation of man and woman, in Society, is determined not by a conscious exercise of tyranny on the one side, or subjection on the other. Each sex has its peculiar mental and moral laws, the differences between which are perhaps too subtle and indefinable to be distinctly drawn, but they are as palpable in life as the white and red which neighboring roses draw from the self-same soil. When we have differed in regard to Woman, I have meant to speak sincerely and earnestly, out of the knowledge gained by an unfortunate experience, which, nevertheless, has not touched the honor and reverence in which I hold the sex. I ask you to remember this, in case the confidence I have forced upon you should hereafter set a gulf between us.

"I have deprived myself of the right to make any request, but whatever your judgment may be, will you let me hear it from your own lips? Will you allow me to see you once more? I write to you now, not because I should shrink from speaking the same words, but because a history like mine is not always easily or clearly told, and I wish your mind to be uninfluenced by the sympathy which a living voice might inspire.

"On Tuesday next you will be free to take your accustomed walk. May I be your companion again, beside the stream? But, no: do not write: you will find me there if you consent to see me. If you do not come, I shall expect the written evidence, if not of your continued respect, at least of your forgive ness. But, in any case, think of me always as one man who, having known you, will never cease to honor Woman.

"Your friend,

"MAXWELL WOODBURY."

CHAPTER XXXI.

IN WHICH THE STRONG-MINDED WOMAN BECOMES WEAK.

Ir did not require the sound of a living voice to inspire Hannah Thurston with sympathy for the story which she had just read. Never before had any man so freely revealed to ber the sanctities of his experience of women. Completely absorbed in the recital, she gave herself up to the first strong impressions of alternate indignation and pity, without reflecting upon the deeper significance of the letter. Woodbury's second episode of passion at first conflicted harshly with the pure ideal in her own mind; the shock was perhaps greater to her than the confession of actual guilt would have been to a woman better acquainted with the world. Having grown up in the chaste atmosphere of her sect, and that subdued life of the emotions which the seclusion of the country creates, it startled her to contemplate a love forbidden by the world, yet justifying itself to the heart. Nevertheless, the profound pity which came upon her as she read took away from her the power of condemnation. The wrong, she felt, was not so much in the love which had unsuspectedly mastered both, as in the impulse to indulge rather than suppress it; but having been suppressed-passion having been purified by self-abnegation and by death, she could not withhold a tender human charity even for this feature of the confession.

Woodbury's questions, however, referred to the future, no less than to the past. They hinted at the possibility of a new love visiting his heart. The desire for it, he confessed, had not grown cold. Deceit and fate had not mastered, in him, the