their futility.

"You may perhaps wonder why I never said to you what I have written
down here. I have tried to do so and failed. If I understand myself
aright, I have written these lines mainly to relieve a craving to
express my affection for you. The awkwardness which an
over-civilized man experiences in admitting that he is something
more than an educated stone prevented me from confusing you by
demonstrations of a kind I had never accustomed you to. Besides, I
wish this assurance of my love--my last word--to reach you when no
further commonplaces to blur the impressiveness of its simple truth
are possible.

"I know I have said too much; and I feel that I have not said
enough. But the writing of this letter has been a difficult task.
Practised as I am with my pen, I have never, even in my earliest
efforts, composed with such labor and sense of inadequacy----"

Here the manuscript broke off. The letter had never been finished.






CHAPTER II