me, perhaps can only half love me.  Then, if that be so, I have done wrong to show him my feelings.  With his ideas about women, he would feel it to be almost unmanly to fold his arms on his breast if a woman put hers about his neck, as I did; and I fear I forced my love upon him.  I feel as I should think a man feels who has taken an unfair advantage of a woman’s fancy for him, and got from her graces and favors to which her whole heart does not assent.  I am not ashamed of loving him:  bear me witness, little book, I am not ashamed of loving him, nor indeed of telling him so; only I would not “betray his will,” as he said this afternoon.  No, no:  if he comes to me, it must be with a whole and willing heart.  Now that’s resolved, what next?  Write to him of course, and tell him I am sorry to have led him into this position, and say, “I won’t do so again.”  Did a woman ever write to a man before and beg his pardon for letting him kiss her? for throwing her arms about his neck?  I doubt it, but what does that matter?  I belong to the new era, and I will be the “Coming Woman.”  I laugh, but I feel, after all, more like crying.  Good-night, little book.  I will write to Mr. Lawrence in the morning.  Now for bed.

Dec. 4.  I wrote to him this morning, and sent my note by a messenger.  I could not work, I could neither think nor write, till his answer came.  He had made the bearer of my note wait, and wrote me just a few words to ask if he might not see me to-night.  I wrote back “Yes,” and now it is only four o’clock:  he will not come till eight.  It seems an impossible time to wait, and I must not waste the afternoon as I did the morning.  Let me see:  shall I finish that article on English love-poetry, past and present, in which I mean to show how the germ of degradation and decay always existed, even in the chivalric idea of woman’s nature and sphere, and how it has gone on developing itself in the poetry which is its truest expression, till we have got its different stages from the ideal of the school which really had a gloss of elevation and fine sentiment about it—­the woman of Herrick and Ben Jonson, and later on of Lovelace and Montrose, to the woman of Owen Meredith and Swinburne, who, instead of inspiring men to die for her honor, makes them rather wish her to live to be the instrument of their pleasure?  It was not a bad idea, and I think I could have traced the gradations very well.  But I cannot write, I cannot think.  Let me recall my letter to him.  Ah, here is one of the dozen copies I made before I could make it what I wanted: 

“MY DEAR MR. LAWRENCE:  I must ask you to forgive me, for I am conscious of having been thoughtless and selfish.  I yielded to an impulse yesterday, and I put you in an unfair position.  I never meant to do it, and I will never do it again.  I trust we may be friends, and I am

“Yours truly,

“MARGARET LINTON.”

That was all I said:  I wish now I had said more.  Ah me! will evening never come?