Shall I ever meet any one of them again, in these pages or in any other?  Will the cracked Teacup hold together, or will he go to pieces, and find himself in that retreat where the owner of the terrible clock which drove him crazy is walking under the shelter of the high walls?  Has the young Doctor’s crown yet received the seal which is Nature’s warrant of wisdom and proof of professional competency?  And Number Five and her young friend the Tutor,—­have they kept on in their dangerous intimacy?  Did they get through the tutto tremante passage, reading from the same old large edition of Dante which the Tutor recommended as the best, and in reading from which their heads were necessarily brought perilously near to each other?

It would be very pleasant if I could, consistently with the present state of affairs, bring these two young people together.  I say two young people, for the one who counts most years seems to me to be really the younger of the pair.  That Number Five foresaw from the first that any tenderer feeling than that of friendship would intrude itself between them I do not believe.  As for the Tutor, he soon found where he was drifting.  It was his first experience in matters concerning the heart, and absorbed his whole nature as a thing of course.  Did he tell her he loved her?  Perhaps he did, fifty times; perhaps he never had the courage to say so outright.  But sometimes they looked each other straight in the eyes, and strange messages seemed to pass from one consciousness to the other.  Will the Tutor ask Number Five to be his wife; and if he does, will she yield to the dictates of nature, and lower the flag of that fortress so long thought impregnable?  Will he go on writing such poems to her as “The Rose and the Fern” or “I Like You and I Love You,” and be content with the pursuit of that which he never can attain?  That is all very well, on the “Grecian Urn” of Keats,—­beautiful, but not love such as mortals demand.  Still, that may be all, for aught that we have yet seen.

   “Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
   Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
   Bold lover, never, never, canst thou kiss,
   Though winning near the goal,—­yet do not grieve;
   She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
   Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

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   “More happy love! more happy, happy love! 
   Forever warm, and still to be enjoyed,
   Forever panting and forever young!”

And so, good-bye, young people, whom we part with here.  Shadows you have been and are to my readers; very real you have been and are to me,—­as real as the memories of many friends whom I shall see no more.

As I am not in the habit of indulging in late suppers, the reader need not think that I shall spread another board and invite him to listen to the conversations which take place around it.  If, from time to time, he finds a slight refection awaiting him on the sideboard, I hope he may welcome it as pleasantly as he has accepted what I have offered him from the board now just being cleared.