late. I have kept it pure ... for Isabel. I can give it to her, darling,
with a kind heart--for she is worthy. She was born for you, dear. We
were not born for each other, after all--were we, dear? I am the woman
of that poem, not Isabel. It is I who must say good-bye. I can do it. I
am a woman now, love--not a little child any more. 'Look in my face
and see.'"

The tangle of Theophil's emotions and thoughts, as he listened to Jenny
in silence, was a revelation to him of the strange heart of love, and of
the insufficiency of those formulas by which we image ourselves to
ourselves. How little we know of ourselves till we are tested by the
powerful reagents of love and danger, and in how many ways must those
tests be applied before we learn anything of the elements of which we
are composed!

One love will reveal to us one side of our natures and its needs,
another will reveal to us another with its needs; and till we grow old
we can never be certain that there are not other sides to us that have
never been illuminated, other needs that have never been awakened, by
an emotion.

A man may love two women equally: the woman he most needs and the woman
who needs him most,--and in a crisis of choice he will probably choose
the latter.

Again, the power of the woman we have loved first has wonderful reserves
to draw upon, humble pawns of feelings, memories, associations, not so
brilliant to the imagination as the royalties of romance and sentiment
on the other side, but incalculably useful in a battle. Too humble are
some of these to gain acknowledgment; indeed they are often so submerged