it open neatly, slowly, one would say
sadly. He read it with an air of singular effort, and yet with a
certain tenderness. When he had finished it, the drops were thick on his
forehead; he groaned and put his hands to his face, which was burning
red.

This was what the impulse of boyhood, years ago, had brought him to! He
was a stately youth, of noble bearing, of high purpose, of fastidious
taste; and, if his broad forehead, his clear, large blue eyes, his
commanding features, his lips, firm, yet plastic to every change of
thought and feeling, were not an empty mask, might not improbably claim
that Promethean quality of which the girl's letter had spoken,--the
strange, divine, dread gift of genius.

This poor, simple, innocent, trusting creature, so utterly incapable
of coming into any true relation with his aspiring mind, his large and
strong emotions,--this mere child, all simplicity and goodness, but
trivial and shallow as the little babbling brooklet that ran by his
window to the river, to lose its insignificant being in the swift
torrent he heard rushing over the rocks,--this pretty idol for a weak
and kindly and easily satisfied worshipper, was to be enthroned as the
queen of his affections, to be adopted as the companion of his labors!
The boy, led by the commonest instinct, the mere attraction of biped
to its female, which accident had favored, had thrown away the dearest
possession of manhood,--liberty,--and this bauble was to be his lifelong
reward! And yet not a bauble either, for a pleasing person and a gentle
and sweet nature, which had once made her seem to him the very paragon
of loveliness, were still hers. Alas! her simple words were true,--he
had grown away from her. Her only fault was that she had not grown with
him, and surely he could not reproach her with that.

"No," he said to himself, "I will never leave her so long as her heart
clings to me. I have been rash, but she shall not pay the forfeit.
And if I may think of myself, my life need not be wretched because she
cannot share all my being with me. The common human qualities are more
than all exceptional gifts. She has a woman's heart; and what talent of
mine is to be named by the love a true woman can offer in exchange for
these divided and cold affections? If it had pleased God to mate me with
one more equal in other ways, who could share my thoughts, who could
kindle my inspiration, who had wings to rise into the air with me as
well as fee