breath, feast on her eyes, her hair, her delicate skin, and I burst
in like a young madman and told Father Conture what I thought. Oh! I
was mad! I should have won her first. I should have worked quietly,
cautiously, waiting, waiting, biding my time. But I could never bide
my time. And now she hates me, Hortense hates me, though she so
nearly learned to love me. There where we used to listen to the
magical river songs, we nearly loved, did we not Hortense? But she
was a _St. Hilaire_, and I--I was nobody, and I had insulted _le bon
Pere_. Yet if I can go back to her rich, prosperous, independent--
What if that happen? But I begin to fancy it will never happen. My
resolutions, where are they, what comes of them? Nothing. I have
tried everything except the opera. Everything else has been rejected.
For a week I have not gone to bed at all. I wait and see those
ghastly gray fingers smoothing my pillow. I am not wanted. I am
crowded out. My hands tremble and I cannot write. My eyes fail and I
cannot see. To the window!

* * * * *

The lights of Oxford St. once more; the glare and the rattle without,
the fever and the ruin, the nerves and the heart within. Poor nerves,
poor heart; it is food you want and wine and rest, and I cannot give
them to you.

* * * * *

Sing, Hortense, will you? Sit by my side, by our dear river St.
Maurice, the clear, the sparkling. See how the floating cribs sail by,
each with its gleaming lights! It is like Venice I suppose. Shall we
see Venice ever, Hortense, you and I? Sing now for me,