ge how little we gathered which could give a clew to her
actual history or to his. The letters almost never gave the name of the
place, only the day and year, many of them only the day. There was dearth
of allusions to persons; it was as if these two had lived in a separate
world of their own. When persons were mentioned at all, it was only by
initials. It was plain that some cruel, inexorable bar separated her from
the man she loved; a bar never spoken of--whose nature we could only
guess,--but one which her strong and pure nature felt itself free to
triumph over in spirit, however submissive the external life might seem.

Their relation had lasted for many years; so many, that that fact alone
seemed a holy seal and testimony to the purity and immortality of the bond
which united them. Esther must have been a middle-aged woman when, as the
saddened letters revealed, her health failed and she was ordered by the
physicians to go to Europe. The first letter which my uncle had read, the
one which Princess found, was the letter in which she bade farewell to
her lover. There was no record after that; only two letters which had come
from abroad; one was the one that I have mentioned, which contained the
pomegranate blossom from Jaffa, and a little poem which, after long hours
of labor, Uncle Jo and I succeeded in deciphering. The other had two
flowers in it--an Edelweiss which looked as white and pure and immortal as
if it had come from Alpine snows only the day before; and a little crimson
flower of the amaranth species, which was wrapped by itself, and marked
"From Bethlehem of Judea." The only other words in this letter were, "I am
better, darling, but I cannot write yet."

It was evident that there had been the deepest intellectual sympathy
between them. Closely and fervently and passionately as their hearts must
have loved, the letters were never, from first to last, simply lovers'
letters. Keen interchange of comment and analysis, full revelation of
strongly marked individual life, constant mutual stimulus to mental growth
there must have been between these two. We were inclined to think, from
the exquisitely phrased sentences and rare fancies in the letters, and
from the graceful movement of some of the little poems, that Esther must
have had ambition as a writer. Then, again, she seemed so wholly, simply,
passionately, a woman, to love and be loved, that all thought of anything
else in her nature or her life seemed inc