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STRAIT IS THE GATE 144

“My friend, what a melancholy meeting! You seemed to lay the blame on other people, but with out being able to convince yourself. And now I think - I know - it will be so always. Oh ! I beg of you, don't let us see each other again! "Why this awkwardness, this feeling of being in a false position, this paralysis, this dumbness, when we have everything in the world to say to each other? The first day of your return this very silence made me happy, because I believed it would vanish, and that you would tell me the most wonderful things; it was impossible that you should leave me without." But when our lugubrious expedition to Orcher came to an end without a word, when, above all, our hands unclasped and fell apart so hopelessly, I thought my heart would have fainted within me for grief and pain. And what distressed me most was not so much that your hand let go mine, but my feeling that if yours had not, mine would have done so, for my hand too no longer felt happy in yours. “The next day — yesterday, I expected you, madly, all the morning. I was too restless to stop indoors, and I left a line for you to tell you where to find me on the jetty. I stayed a long time

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