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161 STRAIT IS THE GATE

could not too soon narrow enough to hold only her and me! Alas! I did not suspect the subtlety of her feint, and little imagined that it would be by a height where there was room for only one, that she might escape me once more. I replied lengthily . I remember the only passage of my letter that was at all clear-sighted. “I often think,” I said, “that my love is the best part of me; that all my virtues are suspended to it; that it raises me above myself, and that without it I should fall back to the mediocre level of a very ordinary disposition. It is the hope of reaching you that will always make me think the steepest path the best." What did I add which can have induced her to answer as follows:


"But, my friend, holiness is not a choice; it is an obligation” (the word was underlined three times in her letter). “If you are what I take you to be, you will not be able to evade it either."


That was all. I understood, or rather I had a foreboding, that our correspondence would stop there, and that neither the most cunning counsels nor the most steadfast determination would be of any avail.

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