ling her that he would
undertake to decide from the appearance of her hands whether she was
glad or sad, laughing or crying. The handwriting, too, was a very
correct expression of her impulsive and self-controlled inner nature.
Now, as he picked out here and there some particular sheet and glanced
over it again, the whole past rose up so vividly before him that he
felt as if he must suffocate in the close, lonely, sad atmosphere that
surrounded him; as if he were lying in his grave, and a voice arose
from these pages and repeated to him the history of his own life, that
now lay ruined and shattered for ever more.

"Your dear, long letter from Mexico," she wrote, "I gave to uncle to
read. He is always teasing me, because I assert that the letters of two
lovers are written to be read by two pairs of eyes only. It was not
possible, he declared, that an epistle of sixteen closely-written
pages, like your last, could be a mere love-letter; no human being
could stand such a thing, and we no longer lived, thank God, in that
paradise of letter-writers--the time of Werther. So I showed him the
Mexican letter, and he gave it back to me with one of his most comical
faces. He declared he had never before come across such a lover; here
he was giving a detailed description of a charming young girl, passing
from one handsome woman to another, as if he could think of nothing
that would give greater pleasure to his far-off sweetheart. That was
certainly rather the opposite of a love-letter; but if I was content to
make the acquaintance of all these Paquitas, Chatitas, and Mariquitas,
he would not begrudge me the pleasure, and congratulated me upon my
slight disposition to jealousy, which, to be sure, was a very useful
trait for me to have in the case of a traveler of this sort.

"I laughed, and he went off to his club, shaking his head.

"But then I grew very serious, and looked into my own heart and tried
to make out why it was that I really did not feel the faintest spark of
jealousy. Perhaps because there is room for nothing in my heart but my
love for you; neither for conceit, nor fear, nor desires, nor doubt. I
have never stopped to consider _why_ it was that we two should have
loved one another. It _was_ so; I felt that even more strongly than I
did my own existence. And for that very reason it seems to me
inconceivable that it can ever be any different. For you do not love me
because I am the most beautiful, the wisest, the wit