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another; erring from the path which may conduct, one of us at least, to a more eligible mode of life than that led by either during the last few weeks. “I loved you⁠—I love you⁠—neither anger nor pride dictates these lines; but a feeling beyond, deeper, and more unalterable than either. My affections are wounded; it is impossible to heal them:⁠—cease then the vain endeavour, if indeed that way your endeavours tend. Forgiveness! Return! Idle words are these! I forgive the pain I endure; but the trodden path cannot be retraced. “Common affection might have been satisfied with common usages. I believed that you read my heart, and knew its devotion, its unalienable fidelity towards you. I never loved any but you. You came the embodied image of my fondest dreams. The praise of men, power and high aspirations attended your career. Love for you invested the world for me in enchanted light; it was no longer the earth I trod⁠—the earth, common mother, yielding only trite and stale repetition of objects and circumstances old and worn-out. I lived in a temple glorified by intensest sense of devotion and rapture; I walked, a consecrated being, contemplating only your power, your excellence; ‘The bloom has vanished from my life’⁠—there is no morning to this all investing night; no rising to the set-sun of love. In those days the rest of the world was nothing to me: all other men⁠—I never considered nor felt what they were; nor did I look on you as one of them. Separated from them; exalted in my heart; sole possessor of my affections; single object of my hopes, the best half of myself.