falling upon you in your studio, and, for want of a smooth, girlish cheek to caress, of trying my hand on a soft bit of clay. Just then I chanced upon an opportunity to go to England; there I stayed until I was ripe for America; and he who once sets foot in the New World, and hasn't left any very pressing business behind him in the Old, can get rid of a few years of his life without knowing exactly how he has done it. It is enough to tell you that I had already reached Rio, traveling by way of San Francisco and Mexico, when I said to myself one day that if I did not want to prolong my exile voluntarily, and so appear to my betrothed in rather a bad light, I must take the next steamer that sailed for Havre, in order to land at last, after all this wandering over the wide world, in the harbor of my wedded bliss.
"I had written regularly to my betrothed every month--beautiful diary-like love-letters--and had received with equal regularity letters from her, which, to speak honestly, had now and then irritated me greatly; so that we had already had (on paper) all manner of misunderstandings, tiffs, quarrels, and reconciliations. I considered that all this belonged of right to a well-conducted three-years' engagement, and did not take it too much to heart when my well-bred, rather provincial little sweetheart, who had grown up in the atmosphere of the petty capital, occasionally gave her vagabond fiancé a little moral lesson. Perhaps I was wrong, and certainly I was foolish, always to report my varied adventures with absolute candor. There were no very serious matters among them; and the few cases of real human weaknesses and sins I kept to myself--shut up in a sincerely remorseful heart. But she found fault even with the tone of my 'sketches from two hemispheres.' Good heavens! it is easily comprehensible that the poor child, living as she did among such absurd surroundings, could not have much taste for a free life out in the world! Thrown entirely on herself, watched over by a hundred eyes in a narrow, starched, formal society--I once wrote to her that she was only so serious beyond her years because she had had to fill, as it were, a mother's place to herself, and be her own governess and duenna. And, besides all this, there was her uncle's frightful example--for she could not long remain ignorant of his habit of compensating himself for outward respectability by private orgies at his bachelor clubs and petits soupers.
"Only let the three years be over, I thought to myself, and we will soon weed out the tares that have sprung up between our roses. But I did not know the vigor of the ground in which all this bad crop had grown up. Nor did I know how much the years between seventeen and twenty signified in such a girl's life.
"At last, then, I arrived at home, and found--but, no!" He checked himself abruptly, and made a sharp cut at the air with his cane. "Why should I bore you with a detailed story of a domestic comedy that has only a decidedly unfavorable likeness to 'Much Ado about Nothing,' and, instead of ending with the reconciliation between Benedict and Beatrice, finished with a ridiculous eternal separation? For isn't it almost as laughable as lamentable that two lovers, who for three whole years, the world over, have been extravagantly fond of one another, should count the days till they could fall again on one another's necks, and then should not be able to get on together for six weeks? And all this only because--as old Goethe says--man strives for liberty, woman for morality; and because the said moral law seems to the man a wretched slavery, while the unhappy young woman thinks even a very moderate freedom immoral! Ah, my dear old Hans, what did I not endure in those six weeks!--and more especially because I was thoroughly dissatisfied with myself. After our altogether fruitless (and therefore all the more obstinate) discussions of these questions, in which I poured out my bitterest scorn upon her court-etiquette, her kid-gloved prejudices, her duenna-like code of morals, while she put my baseless principles to shame with a maidenly pride and firmness that I could have kissed her for--always after these discussions I used to say to myself, in the quiet of my chamber, that I was a mad fool to upset matters as I did. With a little diplomacy, a little delicate tact, and patient hypocrisy, I could have thoroughly gained my end; could have borne the stupid ban of society until my marriage; and then, when we were alone together, could have gradually developed my little wife out of her doll-like state of servitude, and rejoiced to see her spread her wings in freedom.
"But it was odd: as often as I appeared before her with the best resolves in the world--the war began again. You must not imagine that she fairly entered the lists, challenged me, and herself brought up our old points of conflict. But it was precisely her quiet reserve, her obvious good intention to be cautious with the reckless scapegrace, and to leave his reform to time--it was all this that overthrew my finest diplomatic projects. I would begin to joke, then to chaff, then to hurl the most fearful insults against people and customs that seemed fairly holy to her--and so it went on, day after day, until there came one day that fairly 'forced the bottom out of the cask'--a wretched, wretched day!"
He paused a moment, and fixed his eyes gloomily upon the ground.
"There's no help for it!" he said, at last. "It must come out. Once in my life I did something that humiliated me in my own eyes. I committed a sin against my own sense of honor--a base act, for which I never can forgive myself, although a court of honor in matters of gallantry--chosen from among my own equals, mind you--would probably have let me off with a slight penance, if not scot-free altogether. You know what I think of what is called sin; there is no absolute moral code; what brands one forever is only a little spot upon another--all according to the delicacy and sensitiveness of the skin. Even conscience is a product of culture, and the categorical imperative is a pure fiction. What a brutal blackguard of a soldier permits himself in plundering a captured town, and feels his conscience untroubled, would dishonor his officer to all eternity. But I am not going to theorize; suffice it to say that that inner harmony with one's self, on which everything depends, was utterly destroyed in me by this act. From the way in which it haunted me, you can conceive how, in a moment of weakness, I confessed the whole story to Irene's uncle, little consolation as I could get from the absolution of so very odd a saint. I saw how little, when he utterly failed to understand how I could take the matter so to heart, especially as it had taken place a considerable time before my engagement. I instantly repented most bitterly that I had confided in him; and his promise, never by a single syllable to recur to it, reassured me but little.
"I was right. He forgot it himself; and one unhappy day he began, in the very presence of his niece--we had just been speaking of all manner of far more innocent adventures, and even these she would not let pass--he began to refer to that wretched story. Something must have come into my face that instantly gave my sweetheart an idea that this reference meant something beyond the common. Her uncle, too, began to stammer, and made a clumsy attempt to change the subject. That made the matter worse. Irene stopped talking, and soon after left the room. The uncle, good-natured as usual, cursed his own loquacity again and again; but, naturally, that did not help things. When I saw my little one again, she asked me to what his words referred. I was too proud to lie to her; I confessed that I carried about with me the memory of something that I wished to conceal from myself--how much more from her! With that she grew silent again. But on the evening of that day, when I was a second time alone with her, she told me that she must know the whole. I could not have done anything that she could not forgive me; but she felt that she could not live by my side when there was such a secret between us.
"Perhaps a wiser man might have invented some story, and so have avoided a greater evil. There is such a thing as a necessary lie. But I held to the belief that every man is alone responsible for his acts; that I should add a second sin to the first if I burdened the pure soul of my darling with such a confidence; and so I remained unshaken, though I knew her too well not to know how much was at stake.
"On the next morning I received her parting letter--a letter that for the first time showed me all that I was losing.
"But I had gone too far to turn back. I answered that I would wait until she changed her opinions; that in the mean time I should look upon myself as bound to her; but she was, of course, entirely free.
"That was a week ago. I reflected that of course it would be necessary to leave at once those places where she might meet me. In putting my house in order for an indefinite absence, I came upon a package of visiting-cards in one of my mother's cupboards that had on them
