down into the stress and worry of life, when I found you so high
above it? And what can I offer you in exchange?' These are the
thoughts which come back and back all day, and leave me in the
blackest fit of despondency. I confessed to you that I had dark
humours, but never one so hopeless as this. I do not wish my worst
enemy to be as unhappy as I have been to-day.

Write to me, my own darling Maude, and tell me all you think, your
very inmost soul, in this matter. Am I right? Have I asked too much
of you? Does the change frighten you? You will have this in the
morning, and I should have my answer by the evening post. I shall
meet the postman. How hard I shall try not to snatch the letter from
him, or to give myself away. Wilson has been in worrying me with
foolish talk, while my thoughts were all of our affairs. He worked
me up into a perfectly homicidal frame of mind, but I hope that I
kept on smiling and was not discourteous to him. I wonder which is
right, to be polite but hypocritical, or to be inhospitable but
honest.

Good-bye, my own dearest sweetheart--all the dearer when I feel that
I may lose you.--Ever your devoted

FRANK.

St. Albans, June 8th.

Frank, tell me for Heaven's sake what your letter means! You use
words of love, and yet you talk of parting. You speak as if our love
were a thing which we might change or suppress. O Frank, you cannot
take my love away from me. You don't know what you are to me, my