may be, but impertinent, surely not! If I were, would not my heart tell
me so, seeing it is all on your side?

"My name is John Day; I do not yet know yours. I have not dared to
inquire after it, lest I should hear of some impassable gulf between us.
The fear of such a gulf haunts me. I can think of nothing but the face I
saw over the wall through the clusters of lilac: the wall seems to keep
rising and rising, as if it would hide you for ever.

"Is it wrong to think thus of you without your leave? If one may not love
the loveliest, then is the world but a fly-trap hung in the great heaven,
to catch and ruin souls!

"If I am writing nonsense--I cannot tell whether I am or not--it is
because my wits wander with my eyes to gaze at you through the leaves of
the wild white rose under which you are asleep. Loveliest of faces, may
no gentlest wind of thought ripple thy perfect calm, until I have said
what I must, and laid it where she will find it!

"I live at Rising, the manor-house over the heath. I am the son of Lady
Cairnedge by a former marriage. I am twenty years of age, and have just
ended my last term at Oxford. May I come and see you? If you will not see
me, why then did you walk into my quiet house, and turn everything upside
down? I shall come to-night, in the dusk, and wait in the heather,
outside the fence. If you come, thank God! if you do not, I shall believe
you could not, and come again and again and again, till hope is dead. But
I warn you I am a terrible hoper.

"It would startle, perhaps offend you, to wake and see me; but I cannot
bear to leave you asleep. Something might come too near you. I will write