reflect on the past of those we love. A bundle of letters
found after years of happy union creates no sense of
insecurity in the present; and yet it will pain a man sharply.
The two people entertain no vulgar doubt of each other: but
this pre-existence of both occurs to the mind as something
indelicate. To be altogether right, they should have had twin
birth together, at the same moment with the feeling that
unites them. Then indeed it would be simple and perfect and
without reserve or afterthought. Then they would understand
each other with a fulness impossible otherwise. There would
be no barrier between them of associations that cannot be
imparted. They would be led into none of those comparisons
that send the blood back to the heart. And they would know
that there had been no time lost, and they had been together
as much as was possible. For besides terror for the
separation that must follow some time or other in the future,
men feel anger, and something like remorse, when they think of
that other separation which endured until they met. Some one
has written that love makes people believe in immortality,
because there seems not to be room enough in life for so great
a tenderness, and it is inconceivable that the most masterful
of our emotions should have no more than the spare moments of
a few years. Indeed, it seems strange; but if we call to mind
analogies, we can hardly regard it as impossible.

"The blind bow-boy," who smiles upon us from the end of
terraces in old Dutch gardens, laughingly hails his bird-bolts
among a fleeting generation. But for as fast as ever he
shoots, the game dissolves and disappears into eternity from
under his falling arrows; this one is gone ere he is struck;