like a child to whom we give all it asks, or like a courtesan, allowed by some thoughtless youth to squander his fortune.  Ah! such indulgence was, in truth, an insult.  Did you think I could not live without fine dresses, balls and operas and social triumphs?  Am I so frivolous a woman?  Do you think me incapable of serious thought, of ministering to your fortune as I have to your pleasures?  If you were not so far away, and so unhappy, I would blame you for that impertinence.  Why lower your wife in that way?  Good heavens! what induced me to go into society at all?—­to flatter your vanity; I adorned myself for you, as you well know.  If I did wrong, I am punished, cruelly; your absence is a harsh expiation of our mutual life.

Perhaps my happiness was too complete; it had to be paid by some great trial—­and here it is.  There is nothing now for me but solitude.  Yes, I shall live at Lanstrac, the place your father laid out, the house you yourself refurnished so luxuriously.  There I shall live, with my mother and my child, and await you,—­sending you daily, night and morning, the prayers of all.  Remember that our love is a talisman against all evil.  I have no more doubt of you than you can have of me.  What comfort can I put into this letter,—­I so desolate, so broken, with the lonely years before me, like a desert to cross.  But no!  I am not utterly unhappy; the desert will be brightened by our son,—­yes, it must be a son, must it not?

And now, adieu, my own beloved; our love and prayers will follow you.  The tears you see upon this paper will tell you much that I cannot write.  I kiss you on this little square of paper, see! below.  Take those kisses from

Your Natalie.

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This letter threw Paul into a reverie caused as much by memories of the past as by these fresh assurances of love.  The happier a man is, the more he trembles.  In souls which are exclusively tender—­and exclusive tenderness carries with it a certain amount of weakness —­jealousy and uneasiness exist in direct proportion to the amount of the happiness and its extent.  Strong souls are neither jealous nor fearful; jealousy is doubt, fear is meanness.  Unlimited belief is the principal attribute of a great man.  If he is deceived (for strength as well as weakness may make a man a dupe) his contempt will serve him as an axe with which to cut through all.  This greatness, however, is the exception.  Which of us has not known what it is to be abandoned by the spirit which sustains our frail machine, and to hearken to that mysterious Voice denying all?  Paul, his mind going over the past, and caught here and there by irrefutable facts, believed and doubted all.  Lost in thought, a prey to an awful and involuntary incredulity, which was combated by the instincts of his own pure love and his faith in Natalie, he read and re-read that wordy letter, unable to decide the question which it raised either for or against his wife.  Love is sometimes as great and true when smothered in words as it is in brief, strong sentences.