myself not indifferent to you, I resolved never to speak of my love,
but to struggle against it, and root it out of my heart. You know how
differently it happened. Your changed manner, your averted looks, gave
me much pain. I feared to have offended you, or in some way forfeited
your esteem. I brought you here to ask an explanation. I said,
'Juanita, are you no longer my friend?' You know what followed; the
violence of your emotion showed me all. You remember?"

Did I not?--and was it not generous of him to remind me then?

"I saw you loved me, and the great joy of that knowledge made me forget
prudence, reason, everything. Afterwards, when alone, I tried to
justify to myself what I had done, and partially succeeded. I argued
that we were young and could wait; I dreamed, too, that my ardor could
outrun time, and grasp in youth the rewards of mature life. In that
hope I left you.

"Since then my views have greatly changed. I have seen something--not
much, it is true--of men and of life, and have found that it is an easy
thing to dream of success, but a long and difficult task to achieve it.
That I have talent it would be affectation to deny; but many a poor and
struggling lawyer is my equal. The best I can hope for, Juanita, is a
youth of severe toil and griping penury, with, perhaps, late in
life,--almost too late to enjoy it,--competence and an honorable name.
And even that is by no means secure; the labor and the poverty may last
my life long.

"You have been reared in the enjoyment of every luxury which wealth can
command. How could you bear to suffer privations, to perform menial
labors, to be stinted in dress, deprived of congenial society, obliged