about his features, I prefer to call him Mr. N+1. He represented a
long line of young men who possess wavy, dishevelled locks, straight,
bold, and open looks, well-formed and strong bodies, and very large
and powerful hearts.

All these youths have loved and perpetuated their love. Some of
them have succeeded in engraving it on the tablets of history, like
Henry IV; others, like Petrarch, have made literary preserves of it;
some have availed themselves for that purpose of the newspapers,
wherein the happenings of the day are recorded, and where they
figured among those who had strangled themselves, shot themselves, or
who had been shot by others; still others, the happiest and most
modest of all, perpetuated their love by entering it in the birth
records--by creating posterity.

The love of N+1 was as strong as death, as a certain writer put it;
as strong as life, he thought.

Max was firmly convinced that he was the first to have discovered
the method of loving so intensely, so unrestrainedly, so passionately,
and he regarded with contempt all who had loved before him. Still
more, he was convinced that even after him no one would love as he
did, and he felt sorry that with his death the secret of true love
would be lost to mankind. But, being a modest young man, he attributed
part of his achievement to her--to his beloved. Not that she was
perfection itself, but she came very close to it, as close as an
ideal can come to reality.

There were prettier women than she, there were wiser women, but was
there ever a better woman? Did there ever exist a woman on whose