it to you, and I should make myself tiresome by the length of time I should consume: so I am going to write it down, in order that you may read it at your leisure, and leave off when you like; or, if it bores you, put it away unread until your memory of me grows so dim that all the disagreeable part of our acquaintance has faded, and you take up my letter to bring back the ghost of this short winter, which is fast drawing to an end.
First, I would thank you—and you little know how sincerely I say it—for showing me this evening that you are not so utterly devoid of confidence in me as I had supposed. It is a bitter thing for a man to feel that the woman who, in a quiet, most unobtrusive way, without knowledge of her own, has crept into his heart, and filled it so completely that nothing will ever take her place,—it is a bitter thing for this man to know that the woman feels nothing but contempt for him. You showed me last night that you had learned to trust me somewhat. It will be my own fault if I ever sink back to my old level in your esteem. If this new trust in me should not be sufficient to convince you of the truth of all that is contained in this letter, you have only to refer to Nicolas, in whom, I am aware, you have implicit faith.
Do you know that I am thirty-seven years old? Think what a mere boy I was fifteen years ago! It was then that this episode occurred. I confess frankly that I was a wild fellow, and my father had a great deal of trouble with me.
We came home from America, where all my boyhood had been passed, and where I had indulged in an infi-
