onable act of audacity, by committing a still greater one.
Perhaps you will not believe me, or will consider me a raving madman
for betraying to you, after so short an acquaintance, a passion that
has carried me beyond all bounds of propriety and decorum. But you
would judge differently, if you knew in what dreariness and isolation
of heart I have passed the five years since I came to Munich; that not
an hour's happiness has been vouchsafed to me; that no womanly being
capable of awakening a single deeper thought has come near me. It is
true I have not thought it worth my while to seek for such
companionship. I have deluded myself with the idea that I missed
nothing, that my heart and feelings did not hunger and thirst--until
you suddenly crossed my path--and then this sudden vision of beauty and
grace, coming as it did after long loneliness, brought about an
intoxication that has completely robbed me of my senses.

"I doubt whether this explanation will be clear to you. I know nothing
more of you than your enthusiastic friend, our good Angelica, has told
us. Perhaps you may never have had any experience yourself that would
lead you to believe that a passion which bursts so suddenly upon
reasonable men could be found anywhere but in a fairy tale. Enough, I
thought I owed it to myself to tell you of this fact, merely as a
singular instance that need trouble you no farther. And now, permit me
to take my leave. I--I should really have nothing more to tell you, and
as for you--I find it no more than right that you should prefer to
reply only by silence to such singular and extraordinary disclosures."

"No," she cried suddenly, as he already had his hand upon the
door-knob; "it is not so right as you think, for one to tell all that
he has upon his heart, while the other only accepts it all, and gives
no confidence in return. To be sure, I know very well--I must attribute
much of what you have confided to me to the easily-excited fantasy of
an artist. Nevertheless, I am not so vain as not to imagine that in the
course of five years you have never encountered a face fairer and more
blooming than this of mine, that I have now borne about with me for
full thirty-one. And for that reason I am almost forced to believe that
there really is a secret bond of fate that quickly draws two human
beings together in an altogether inexplicable way. For see--" she
continued, covered with a confusion that only made her more beautiful,
as she