p their quarrels? If young
people, in the years of their happiest freedom, cannot amuse themselves
without submitting to the restraint of customs and conventionality, why
should you be so angry with our poor aristocracy, that endeavors to
console itself by these wretched devices for the emptiness of its
existence?

"It is only among ourselves that we need not submit to any formality!
Only when in his most intimate circle can one be a human being! And,
since it is so, I think we can easily spare the little tribute of
restraint that we have to render to our social equals.

"So do come back, and behave like a pink of propriety, my darling
scapegrace; and try and make your seven-league boots accommodate
themselves to the minuet step of our dear capital at least once in
every month or two. Then when we are alone again in our own four walls,
I will do all I can to make up to you for the _ennui_ you have
suffered; and I will gladly dance the bolero with you, if you will only
teach me how."

This letter was soon followed by their reunion. With what a feeling he
took up all the little notes, that at that time had but a few streets
to go, to bring messages about a walk, a visit for which he was to call
for her, or some incident that had made it impossible to keep an
engagement! These notes showed, now and then, traces of some more
serious misunderstanding that had taken place between the two lovers:
an appeal to be very gentle to-day, a promise not to refer by a
syllable to the dispute of the day before. He seemed to see again all
that he had once read between these lines.

And then came her last letter, the letter of parting:

"I am quite quiet now, Felix, or at least as quiet as one is when pain
has exhausted all one's strength. I write to you this very night, for
of course there can be no thought of sleep. I have again and again
thought it all over from the beginning, and have each time arrived at
the same conclusion--that I deceived myself in believing through all
these years that I was necessary to your happiness. Do not try to shake
this belief; I am sadly humbled, Felix, very wretched and miserable
because of this confession; but I am as sure that it is true, as I am
that I still live and breathe.

"I know that you still love me, perhaps quite as much as you have
always loved me. But one thing I did not know before, and I learn it
now with pain: you love something better than you do me--your freedom.

"You would