"Letters," Rosalind confided, to one of the pines, "are so unsatisfactory. They mean so little."
"To the man," I said, firmly, "they meant a great deal. They brought him everything that he most wished for,--comprehension, sympathy, and, at last, comfort and strength when they were sore needed. So the man, who was at first but half in earnest, announced to himself that he had made a discovery. 'I have found,' said he, 'the great white love which poets have dreamed of. I love this woman greatly, and she, I think, loves me. God has made us for each other, and by the aid of her love I will be pure and clean and worthy even of her.' You have doubtless discovered by this stage in my narrative," I added, as in parenthesis, "that the man was a fool."
"Oh, he discovered it himself in due time--but not until after he had written a book about her. _As the Coming of Dawn_ the title was to have been. It was--oh, just about her. It tried to tell how greatly he loved her. It tried--well, it failed of course, because it isn't within the power of any writer to express what the man felt for that girl. Why, his love was so great--to him, poor fool!--that it made him at times forget the girl herself, apparently. He didn't want to write her trivial letters. He just wanted to write that great book in her honour, which would _make_ her understand, even against her will, and then to die, if need be, as Geoffrey Rudel did. For that was the one thing which counted--to make her understand--" I paused, and anyone could see that I was greatly moved. In fact, I was believing every word of it by this time.
"Oh, but who wants a man to _die_ for her?" wailed Rosalind.
"It is quite true that one infinitely prefers to see him make a fool of himself. So the man discovered when he came again to bring his foolish book to her,--the book that was to make her understand. And so he burned it--in a certain June. For the girl had merely liked him, and had been amused by him. So she had added him to her collection of men, --quite a large one, by the way,--and was, I believe, a little proud of him. It was, she said, rather a rare variety, and much prized by collectors."
"And how was _she_ to know?" said Rosalind; and then, remorsefully: "Was it a very horrid girl?"