the silver-shining sea with
his dark eyes full of dreams. Then he took from his shabby trunk a
little inlaid box and unlocked it with a twisted silver key. It was
full of letters--his letters to Una. The first had been written months
ago, in the early promise of a northern spring. They linked together
the golden weeks of the summer. Now, in the purple autumn, the box was
full, and the schoolmaster's term was nearly ended.

He took out the letters reverently and looked over them, now and then
murmuring below his breath some passages scattered through the written
pages. He had laid bare his heart in those letters, writing out what
he never could have told her, even if his love had been known and
returned, for dead and gone generations of stern and repressed
forefathers laid their unyielding fingers of reserve on his lips, and
the shyness of dreamy, book-bred youth stemmed the language of eye and
tone.

I will love you forever and ever. And even though you know it
not, surely such love will hover around you all your life.
Like an invisible benediction, not understood but dimly felt,
guarding you from ill and keeping far from you all things and
thoughts of harm and evil!

* * * * *

Sometimes I let myself dream. And in those dreams you love me,
and we go out to meet life together. I have dreamed that you
kissed me--dreamed it so reverently that the dream did your
womanhood no wrong. I have dreamed that you put your hands in
mine and said, "I love you." Oh, the rapture of it!

* * * * *

We may give all we will if we do not ask for a return. There
should be no barter in love. If, by reason of the greatness of
my love for you, I were to ask your love in return, I should
be a base creature. It is only because I am content to love
and serve for the sake of loving and serving that I have the
right to love you.

* * * * *

I have a memory of a blush of yours--a rose of the years that
will bloom forever in my garden of remembrance. Tonight you
blushed when I came upon you suddenly among the flowers. You
were startled--perhaps I had broken too rudely on some girlish
musing; and straightway your round, pale curve of cheek and
your white arch of brow were made rosy as with the dawn of
beautiful sunrise. I shall see yo