limited income.  I have made myself miserable, because I feel that you are marrying me without a suspicion of the long weary uphill struggle which lies before you.  O Maude, my darling Maude, I feel that you sacrifice too much for me!  If I were a man I should say to you, ’Forget me—­forget it all!  Let our relations be a closed chapter in your life.  You can do better.  I and my cares come like a great cloud-bank to keep the sunshine from your young life.  You who are so tender and dainty!  How can I bear to see you exposed to the drudgery and sordid everlasting cares of such a household!  I think of your graces, your pretty little ways, the elegancies of your life, and how charmingly you carry them off.  You are born and bred for just such an atmosphere as the one which you breathe.  And I take advantage of my good-fortune in winning your love to drag you down, to take the beauty and charm from your life, to fill it with small and vulgar cares, never-ending and soul-killing.  Selfish beast that I am, why should I allow you to come down into the stress and worry of life, when I found you so high above it?  And what can I offer you in exchange?’ These are the thoughts which come back and back all day, and leave me in the blackest fit of despondency.  I confessed to you that I had dark humours, but never one so hopeless as this.  I do not wish my worst enemy to be as unhappy as I have been to-day.

Write to me, my own darling Maude, and tell me all you think, your very inmost soul, in this matter.  Am I right?  Have I asked too much of you?  Does the change frighten you?  You will have this in the morning, and I should have my answer by the evening post.  I shall meet the postman.  How hard I shall try not to snatch the letter from him, or to give myself away.  Wilson has been in worrying me with foolish talk, while my thoughts were all of our affairs.  He worked me up into a perfectly homicidal frame of mind, but I hope that I kept on smiling and was not discourteous to him.  I wonder which is right, to be polite but hypocritical, or to be inhospitable but honest.

Good-bye, my own dearest sweetheart—­all the dearer when I feel that I may lose you.—­Ever your devoted

Frank.

St. Albans, June 8th.

Frank, tell me for Heaven’s sake what your letter means!  You use words of love, and yet you talk of parting.  You speak as if our love were a thing which we might change or suppress.  O Frank, you cannot take my love away from me.  You don’t know what you are to me, my heart, my life, my all.  I would give my life for you willingly, gladly—­every beat of my heart is for you.  You don’t know what you have become to me.  My every thought is yours, and has been ever since that night at the Arlingtons’.  My love is so deep and strong, it rules my whole life, my every action from morning to night.  It is the very breath and heart of my life—­unchangeable.  I could not