"
"Ah!" ejaculated Allan, as he read and re-read this brief epistle,
"she does not despise my love, but she recognizes its hopelessness."
With the usual bluntness of masculine perception he failed to see that
it was impossible for her to ignore what he himself was accustomed to
dwell upon at such dreary length. If he was profoundly convinced that
there was no hope, she could scarcely condescend to suggest that there
might be a glimmer. So the young man continued to be wrapped in the
darkness which was largely born of his own imagination.
"What rank," he wrote, in immediate response, "shall I assign you
among my friends? One's friend may be simply an acquaintance of long
standing, who cherishes no special animosity toward one, or it may be
the stranger of a year ago, who now is knit into the very fibre of
one's being. Just so closely woven with my inmost self have you grown,
dear, and to put the thought of you away from me is like putting my
own eyes from me. Do you think I can be trusted as a friend? I foresee
that I shall be the most faithless one ever known, for I have never
been your friend, and I don't know how to begin to be one, whereas I
have had nearly a year's experience in loving you.
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