heart without alluring it. I loved her as only a boy can love, and
boys love with an intensity and truth and purity which few preserve in
their youth and manhood; but I believed she belonged to the "strange
people" to whom you are not allowed to speak of love. I scarcely
understood the earnest words she spoke to me. I only felt that her
soul was as near to mine as one human soul can be to another. All
bitterness was gone from my heart. I felt myself no longer alone, no
longer a stranger, no longer shut out. I was by her, with her and in
her. I thought it might be a sacrifice for her to give me the ring,
and that she might have preferred to take it to the grave with her, and
a feeling arose in my soul which overshadowed all other feelings, and I
said with quivering voice: "Thou must keep the ring if thou dost not
wish to give it to me; for what is thine is mine." She looked at me a
moment surprised and thoughtfully. Then she took the ring, placed it
on her finger, kissed me once more on the forehead, and said gently to
me: "Thou knowest not what thou sayest. Learn to understand thyself.
Then shall thou be happy and make many others happy."




FOURTH MEMORY.

Every life has its years in which one progresses as on a tedious and
dusty street of poplars, without caring to know where he is. Of these
years nought remains in memory but the sad feeling that we have
advanced and only grown older. While the river of life glides along
smoothly, it remains the same river; only the landscape on either bank
seems to change. But then come the cataracts of life. They are firmly
fixed in memory, and even when we are past them and far away, and draw