An alliance with that family would condemn me to its manner of life, part me from my books and studies, and in a social sense reduce me to the ranks.  It is easy to deprecate such considerations as these and I have not retained myself for the defense.  Let judgment be entered against me, but in strict justice all my ancestors for generations should be made co-defendants and I be permitted to plead in mitigation of punishment the imperious mandate of heredity.  To a mesalliance of that kind every globule of my ancestral blood spoke in opposition.  In brief, my tastes, habits, instinct, with whatever of reason my love had left me—­all fought against it.  Moreover, I was an irreclaimable sentimentalist, and found a subtle charm in an impersonal and spiritual relation which acquaintance might vulgarize and marriage would certainly dispel.  No woman, I argued, is what this lovely creature seems.  Love is a delicious dream; why should I bring about my own awakening?

“The course dictated by all this sense and sentiment was obvious.  Honor, pride, prudence, preservation of my ideals—­all commanded me to go away, but for that I was too weak.  The utmost that I could do by a mighty effort of will was to cease meeting the girl, and that I did.  I even avoided the chance encounters of the garden, leaving my lodging only when I knew that she had gone to her music lessons, and returning after nightfall.  Yet all the while I was as one in a trance, indulging the most fascinating fancies and ordering my entire intellectual life in accordance with my dream.  Ah, my friend, as one whose actions have a traceable relation to reason, you cannot know the fool’s paradise in which I lived.

“One evening the devil put it into my head to be an unspeakable idiot.  By apparently careless and purposeless questioning I learned from my gossipy landlady that the young woman’s bedroom adjoined my own, a party-wall between.  Yielding to a sudden and coarse impulse I gently rapped on the wall.  There was no response, naturally, but I was in no mood to accept a rebuke.  A madness was upon me and I repeated the folly, the offense, but again ineffectually, and I had the decency to desist.

“An hour later, while absorbed in some of my infernal studies, I heard, or thought I heard, my signal answered.  Flinging down my books I sprang to the wall and as steadily as my beating heart would permit gave three slow taps upon it.  This time the response was distinct, unmistakable:  one, two, three—­an exact repetition of my signal.  That was all I could elicit, but it was enough—­too much.