He found her alone one evening.  He begged her to walk in the garden.  She complied with an unsuspecting smile.  Then he told her all he had suffered for her sake; how he had loved her this three years with all his soul—­how he never thought to tell her this—­how hard he had struggled against it—­how he had run away from it, and after that how he had subdued it, or thought he had subdued it, to esteem—­and how he had been rewarded by seeing that his visits and his talk had done her some good.  “But now,” said he, “that you are free, I have no longer the force to hide my love; now that the man I dared not interfere with has thrown away the jewel, it is not in nature that I should not beg to be allowed to take it up and wear it in my heart.”

Susan listened; first with surprise, then with confusion and pain, then with terror at the violence of the man’s passion; for, the long restraint removed, it overwhelmed him like a flood.  Her bosom heaved with modest agitation, and soon the tears streamed down her cheeks at his picture of what he had gone through for her sake.  She made shift to gasp out, “My poor friend!” But she ended almost fiercely:  “Let no man ever hope for affection from me, for my heart is in the grave.  Oh, that I was there, too!” And she ran sobbing away from him in spite of his entreaties.

Another man and not George had made a confession of love to her.  His voice had trembled, his heart quivered, with love for her, and it was not George.  So then another link was snapped.  Others saw they had a right to love her now, and acted on it.

Meadows was at a loss, but he stayed away a week in silence, and thought and thought, and then he wrote a line begging permission to visit her as usual.  “I have been so long used to hide my feelings, because they were unlawful, that I can surely hide them if I see they make you more unhappy than you would be without.”

Susan replied that her advice to him was to avoid her as he would a pestilence.  He came as usual, and told her he would take her commands, but could not take her advice.  He would run all risks to his own heart.  He was cheerful, chatty and never said a word of love; and this relieved Susan, so that the evening passed pleasantly.  Susan, listless and indifferent to present events, and never accustomed, like Meadows, to act upon a preconceived plan, did not even observe what Meadows had gained by this sacrifice of his topic for a single night, viz., that after declaring himself her lover he was still admitted to the house.  The next visit he was not quite so forbearing, yet still forbearing; and so on by sly gradations.  It was every way an unequal contest.  A great man against an average woman—­a man of forty against a woman of twenty-two—­a man all love and selfishness against a woman all affection and unselfishness.  But I think his chief ally was a firm belief on Susan’s part that he was the best of men; that from first to last of this affair his conduct had been perfection; that while George was true all his thought had been to console her grief at his absence; that he never would have spoken but for the unexpected treason of George, and then seeing her insulted and despised he had taken that moment to show her she was loved and honored.  Oh, what an ungrateful girl she was that she could not love such a man!