of the desire to see you and the dread of touching a dream lest it perish.  Ah, yes, you spoke truly.  Miserable, miserable wretches that we are, our timorous souls are so afraid of any reality that they dare not think a sympathy which has taken possession of them capable of surviving an interview with the person who gave it birth.  Yet, in spite of this fine casuistry, I simply must confess to you—­no, no, nothing.  Guess if you can, and forgive me for this banal letter.  Or rather, read between the lines, and perhaps you will find there a little bit of my heart and a great deal of what I leave unsaid.

    “’A foolish letter with “I” written all over it.  Who would
    suspect that while I wrote it my sole thought was of You?’”

“So far, so good.  This woman at least piqued my curiosity.  And what peculiar ink,” he thought.  It was myrtle green, very thin, very pale.  With his finger-nail he detached some of the fine dust of rice powder, perfumed with heliotrope, clinging to the seal of the letters.

“She must be blonde,” he went on, examining the tint of the powder, “for it isn’t the ‘Rachel’ shade that brunettes use.  Now up to that point everything had been going nicely, but then and there I spoiled it.  Moved by I know not what folly, I wrote her a yet more roundabout letter, which, however, was very pressing.  In attempting to fan her flame I kindled myself—­for a spectre—­and at once I received this: 

“’What shall I do?  I neither wish to see you, nor can I consent to annihilate my overwhelming desire to meet you.  Last night, in spite of me, your name, which was burning me, sprang from my lips.  My husband, one of your admirers, it seems, appeared to be somewhat humiliated by the preoccupation which, indeed, was absorbing me and causing unbearable shivers to run all through me.  A common friend of yours and mine—­for why should I not tell you that you know me, if to have met socially is to “know” anyone?—­one of your friends, then, came up and said that frankly he was very much taken with you.  I was in a state of such utter lack of self-control that I don’t know what I should have done had it not been for the unwitting assistance which somebody gave me by pronouncing the name of a grotesque person of whom I can never think without laughing.  Adieu.  You are right.  I tell myself that I will never write you again, and I go and do it anyway.

    “‘Your own—­as I cannot be in reality without wounding us both.’

“Then when I wrote a burning reply, this was brought by a maid on a dead run: 

“’Ah, if I were not afraid, afraid!—­and you know you are just as much afraid as I am—­how I should fly to you!  No, you cannot hear the thousand conversations with which my soul fatigues yours....  Oh, in my miserable existence there are hours when madness seizes me.  Judge for yourself.  The whole night I spent appealing to you furiously.  I wept with exasperation.  This morning my