s my duty to you
as well as to myself to bring our intercourse to an end.

"The truth is that we cannot be friends any longer, for the reason
that I love some one in whom you are, unhappily, too much
interested, and because there are obstacles between that person
and myself which are decisive and insurmountable. This alone puts
it on me as a point of honour that you and I should never see each
other again. Each of my visits adds to my embarrassment, to the
feeling that I am doing wrong in paying them, and to the certainty
that I must give them up altogether.

"Thank you again and again for the more than pleasant hours we
have spent together. It is not your fault that I must bury the
memory of them in oblivion. This does not mean that it is any part
of the painful but unavoidable result of circumstances I cannot
explain, that we should not write to each other as occasion may
arise. Continue to think of me as your brother--your brother far
away--to be called upon for counsel in your hour of need and
necessity. And whenever you call, be sure I shall be there.

"What you say of an important matter suggests that something has
come to your knowledge which concerns myself and the authorities;
but when a man has spent all his life on the edge of a precipice,
the most urgent perils are of little moment, and I beg of you not
to be alarmed for my sake. Whatever it is, it is only a part of
the atmosphere of danger I have always lived in--the glacier I
have always walked upon--and 'if it is not now, it is to come; if
it is not to come, it will be now--the
readiness is all.' Good-bye!--Yours, dear R----, D."

III

Next day brought Roma's reply.

"MY DEAR D.,--Your letter has thrown me into the wildest state of
excitement and confusion. I have done no work all day long, and
when Black has leapt upon me and cried, 'Come out for a walk, you
dear, dear dunce,' I have hardly known whether he barked or
talked.

"I am sorry our charming intercourse is to be interrupted, but you
can't mean that it is to be broken off altogether. You can't, you
can't, or my eyes would be red with crying, instead of dancing
with delight.

"Yet why they should dance I don't really know, seeing you are so
indefinite, and I have no right to understand anythin