e envelope I am
writing to ask you to read Mr. Armstrong's letter to me before you read
my own. He has explained everything there, and now I must make my appeal
to you. I have promised that I will do nothing without your consent,
and I am not very hopeful that I shall secure it. You know that I am not
light-minded, or in the habit of saying what I do not mean, and I shall
only tell you this: I love him with my whole heart and mind, and if you
decide that we are to part I shall accept your decision, but I shall
never know a happy day again. Paul is not only a great man but a good
one.'

(The reader had faced this blow so often that he was ready for it,
but he had no guard against it, and it struck home so heavily that he
groaned aloud.)

'I know now, partly from what I have lately learned from other people,
partly from what he told me last night, but mainly from the letter you
have read, the story of his life, and I know how profoundly unhappy it
has been. I want to comfort and sustain him, and I am not afraid to face
all the difficulties which lie before me. I can hear a clear call to
duty, and I am sure that his love and mine will strengthen me to do it.
You have never known me to be frivolous or foolish in my thoughts about
such things as these, and until we can all three meet together, you must
have patience with me. It would be wrong and cruel on my side to
throw everything upon you, and I shall not ask you to make yourself
responsible for what you may think my wrong-doing. There are a hundred
thousand things in my heart which I cannot say, and amongst them all
there is the dreadful fear that I may have lost your respect. But you
ought to know the truth, and the whole truth. I have not lost my own,
and I cannot believe that I shall ever have the right to be ashamed.'

There was much more than this. There were half-articulate expressions of
affection and fear of an agony of regret for a possible severance. And
through it all there beamed like a star, steadfast and unobscured in
tempest, the loyal heart, the uncountable soul which, in whatsoever
error, knows love and fealty as its only guides.

CHAPTER XXVII

By far the greater part of the theoretical wisdom of the world comes to
us in the shape of legacies bequeathed by fools. A fool is not a person
without knowledge or understanding--that is an ignoramus. The true
fool--the only fool worthy of a wise man's contemplation--is the man who
knows and understa