a sort of jeu d'esprit. You are all esprit. You are one of those 'chilly women of the North.' You only live by your head." He is forever accusing her of coquetry, heartlessness, duplicity, mendacity. "Why, after we have been what we are to each other so long, do you take several days to answer the simplest question?" After her marriage he tells her it is all nonsense for her to say that she is a better person than she was before. "You seem to me prettier; but you have acquired, on the other hand, a pretty dose of selfishness and hypocrisy." It is true that in the beginning of their acquaintance he disclaims the ambition of being her lover. "Perhaps you'll gain a real friend; and I, perhaps, shall find in you what I have been looking for so long—a woman with whom I am not in love and in whom I can have confidence." One doubts whether he was gratified. "You grow every day more imperious and you have scandalous refinements of coquetry." And yet one wonders, too, whether to attribute to friendship or love this vigorous allusion to a walk with his correspondent: "For myself, contrary to my habit, I have no distinct recollections. I am like a cat who licks his whiskers a long time after drinking milk." We owe our knowledge of these letters to the lady herself, who has published them with a frankness more
