But it is the heart, left shaken, unsupported, wretchedly sinking, which reaches out its feelers for sympathy, catches at the first penetrable point, and clings like a helpless vine to the sunny-sided wall of the nearest consolation.  If you wish to marry a girl and can’t, and are weak enough to desire her still, this is what you should do:  get some capable man to jilt her.  Then seize your chance.  All the affections which have gone out to him, unmet, ready to droop, quivering with the painful, hungry instinct to grasp some object, may possibly lay hold of you.  Let the world sneer; but God pity such natures, which lack the faith and fortitude to live and die true to their best love!

“Out of my own mouth do I condemn myself?  Very well, I condemn myself; peccavi!  I If I had ever loved Margaret, then I did not love Flora.  The same heart cannot find its counterpart indifferently in two such opposites.  What charmed me in one was her purity, softness, and depth of soul.  What fascinated me in the other was her bloom, beauty, and passion.  Which was the true sympathy?

“I did not stop to ask that question when it was most important that it should be seriously considered.  I rushed into the crowd of competitors for Flora’s smiles, and distanced them all.  I was pleased and proud that she took no pains to conceal her preference for me.  We played chess; we read poetry out of the same book; we ate at the same table; we sat and watched the sea together, for hours, in those clear, bright days; we promenaded the deck at sunset, her hand upon my arm, her lips forever turning up tenderly towards me, her eyes pouring their passion into me.  Then those glorious nights, when the ocean was a vast, wild, fluctuating stream, flashing and sparkling about the ship, spanned with a quivering bridge of splendor on one side, and rolling off into awful darkness and mystery, on the other; when the moon seemed swinging among the shrouds like a ball of white fire; when the few ships went by like silent ghosts; and Flora and I, in a long trance of happiness, kept the deck, heedless of the throng of promenaders, forgetful of the past, reckless of the future, aware only of our own romance, and the richness of the present hour.

“Joseph, my travelling-companion, looked on, and wrote letters.  He showed me one of these, addressed to a friend of Margaret’s.  In it he extolled Flora’s beauty, piquancy, and supremacy; related how she made all the women jealous and all the men mad; and hinted at my triumph.  I knew that that letter would meet Margaret’s eyes, and was vain enough to be pleased.