“I thank you sincerely for your considerateness,” I said.  “I am under no obligations of the kind to him or any other gentleman.”

He introduced his topic by saying:  “I am glad that I shall have to say little more of myself.  Oh, what a strange joy it is to be able to speak unreservedly of her, and of the long pent-up hopes and fears of the past years!  And now, if you will assist me in interpreting her conduct toward me—­if you will inspire me with even faint hope of success—­if you will advise me as you would a brother how to proceed,—­gratitude will be too weak a word for my feeling toward you for the remainder of my life.”

“I have not yet sufficient light on her part of the affair to aid you by advice,” I answered.  “In these slowly-developing love-affairs there is usually but one great hindering cause.  Do you know,” I said, laughing as much as I dared, looking into his woebegone face, “that you have not told me what has passed between you?”

His moment or two of death silence made me almost regret my last words.

“In the first of our acquaintance I was ever tortured by her indifference.  My first attentions were quietly received, never encouraged.  Then came the still more torturing fear—­agony let me call it—­lest she was pre-engaged.  Thank God! that burden was lifted from my poor heart, but only, it seemed, to make room for the very one of all in the catalogue of causes by which a lover’s hope dies beyond the possibility of a resurrection.  It is the rock—­no, I fear the placid waters of friendship into which my freighted bark is now drifting—­which may lie between it and the bright isle of love, the safe harbor” (he shuddered), “not the blissful possession.”

Reader, the roses were not growing under my needle:  my sympathies were at last fully enlisted.

“You have well said,” I answered.  “Friendship is the ‘nine notch’ in which a lover makes ‘no count’ in the game of hearts.  But steer bravely past these dark gulfs of despair.  Have you ever had recourse to jealousy in your desperation?” I queried.

“I scorn such a base ally.  Your brother can tell you I am here partly because I would avoid increasing an affection in another which I cannot return.”

“Does she know of that?” I asked, not at all prepared in my own mind to yield the potency of the ally in my sincere desire to aid him by this test of a woman’s affection.

“Yes:  I have no reason, however, for thinking that the fact has raised her estimate of the article,” he said, making a poor attempt to smile.

I felt ashamed of my suggestion, and said quickly, “You correspond, of course:  how are her letters?” Now I was sure of my safest clue in finding her out.

“It was through the medium of her letters that I first obtained my knowledge of her mind, her temperament, her disposition, her admirable domestic virtues; for they were written without reserve.  They excited my highest admiration; they stimulated my desire to know more of her; but they contain no word of love for me.”