lacing
the yoke on my neck, you run no risk; I ask nothing but the joy of
knowing myself yours. Needless even to say you will never love me;
it cannot be otherwise. I must love you from afar, without hope,
without reward beyond my own love.

"In my anxiety to know whether you will accept me as your servant,
I have racked my brain to find some way in which you may
communicate with me without any danger of compromising yourself.
Injury to your self-respect there can be none in sanctioning a
devotion which has been yours for many days without your
knowledge. Let this, then, be the token. At the opera this
evening, if you carry in your hand a bouquet consisting of one red
and one white camellia--emblem of a man's blood at the service of
the purity he worships--that will be my answer. I ask no more;
thenceforth, at any moment, ten years hence or to-morrow, whatever
you demand shall be done, so far as it is possible for man to do
it, by your happy servant,

"FELIPE HENAREZ."

_P. S._--You must admit, dear, that great lords know how to love! See
the spring of the African lion! What restrained fire! What loyalty! What
sincerity! How high a soul in low estate! I felt quite small and dazed
as I said to myself, "What shall I do?"

It is the mark of a great man that he puts to flight all ordinary
calculations. He is at once sublime and touching, childlike and of the
race of giants. In a single letter Henarez has outstripped volumes from
Lovelace or Saint-Preux. Here is true love, no beating about the bush.
Love may be or it may not, but where it is, it ought to reveal itself in
its immensity.

Here am I, shorn of all my little arts! To refuse or accept! That is the
alternative boldly presented me, without the ghost of an opening for a
middle course. No fencing allowed! This is no longer Paris; we are in
the heart of Spain or the far East. It is the voice of Abencerrage,
and it is the scimitar, the horse, and the head of Abencerrage which
he offers, prostrate before a Catholic Eve! Shall I accept this last
descendant of the Moors? Read again and again his Hispano-Saracenic
letter, Renee dear, and you will see how love makes a clean sweep of all
the Judaic bargains of your philosophy.

Renee, your letter lies heavy on my heart; you have vulgarized life for
me. What need have I for finessing? Am I not mistress for all time of
this lion whose roar dies out in plaintive and adoring sighs? Ah! ho