“I suppose you have a house full of company, as usual,” he remarked presently, glancing at the brilliant windows.

“Yes, we have a number of friends staying with us.  Will you go in and see them?  There are several whom you know.”

“Thank you,—­not to-night; I am not in the mood.  And I have a good deal to say to you, Juanita, that deeply concerns us both.”

“Very well,” I replied; “you had better tell me at once.”

We walked on to the old garden-chair, and sat down as we had done that memorable night.  We were both silent,—­I from disappointment and apprehension.  He, I suppose, was collecting himself for what he had to say.

“Juanita,” he spoke at last, taking my hand in his, “I do not know how you will receive what I am about to tell you.  But this I wish you to promise me:  that you will believe I speak for our best happiness, —­yours as well as mine.”

“Go on,” was all my reply.

“A year ago,” he continued, “we sat here as we do now, and, spite of doubts and misgivings and a broken resolution, I was happier than I shall ever be again.  I had loved you from the first moment I saw you, with a passion such as I shall never feel for any other woman.  But I knew that we were both poor; I knew that marriage in our circumstances could only be disastrous.  It would wear out your youth in servile cares; it would cripple my energies; it might even, after a time, change our love to disgust and aversion.  And so, though I believed myself not indifferent to you, I resolved never to speak of my love, but to struggle against it, and root it out of my heart.  You know how differently it happened.  Your changed manner, your averted looks, gave me much pain.  I feared to have offended you, or in some way forfeited your esteem.  I brought you here to ask an explanation.  I said, ‘Juanita, are you no longer my friend?’ You know what followed; the violence of your emotion showed me all.  You remember?”

Did I not?—­and was it not generous of him to remind me then?

“I saw you loved me, and the great joy of that knowledge made me forget prudence, reason, everything.  Afterwards, when alone, I tried to justify to myself what I had done, and partially succeeded.  I argued that we were young and could wait; I dreamed, too, that my ardor could outrun time, and grasp in youth the rewards of mature life.  In that hope I left you.

“Since then my views have greatly changed.  I have seen something—­not much, it is true—­of men and of life, and have found that it is an easy thing to dream of success, but a long and difficult task to achieve it.  That I have talent it would be affectation to deny; but many a poor and struggling lawyer is my equal.  The best I can hope for, Juanita, is a youth of severe toil and griping penury, with, perhaps, late in life,—­almost too late to enjoy it,—­competence and an honorable name.  And even that is by no means secure; the labor and the poverty may last my life long.