'I was what some foolish persons are pleased to call, and others, more foolish, are pleased to be called--an aristocrat; and despite her beauty, her charms and grace, the girl was not of my class. Ihad learned her name--which it is needless to speak--and something of her family. She was an orphan, a dependent niece of the impossible elderly fat woman in whose lodging-house she lived. My in-come was small and I lacked the talent for marry-ing; it is perhaps a gift. An alliance with that fam-ily would condemn me to its manner of life, part me from my books and studies, and in a social sense reduce me to the ranks. It is easy to deprecate such considerations as these and I have not retained my-self for the defence. Let judgment be entered against me, but in strict justice all my ancestors for genera-tions should be made co-defendants and I be per-mitted to plead in mitigation of punishment the imperious mandate of heredity. To a mesalliance of that kind every globule of my ancestral blood spoke in opposition. In brief, my tastes, habits, instinct, with whatever of reason my love had left me--all fought against it. Moreover, I was an irreclaimable sentimentalist, and found a subtle charm in an im-personal and spiritual relation which acquaintance might vulgarize and marriage would certainly dis-pel. No woman, I argued, is what this lovely creature seems. Love is a delicious dream; why should Ibring about my own awakening?
'The course dictated by all this sense and senti-ment was obvious. Honour, pride, prudence, preser-vation of my ideals--all commanded me to go away, but for that I was too weak. The utmost that I could do by a mighty effort of will was to cease meeting the girl, and that I did. I even avoided the chance encounters of the garden, leaving my lodg-ing only when I knew that she had gone to her music lessons, and returning after nightfall. Yet all the while I was as one in a trance, indulging the most fascinating fancies and ordering my entire in-tellectual life in accordance with my dream. Ah, my friend, as one whose actions have a traceable rela-tion to reason, you cannot know the fool's paradise in which I lived.
'One evening the devil put it into my head to be an unspeakable idiot. By apparently careless and purposeless questioning I learned from my gossipy landlady that the young woman's bedroom adjoined my own, a party-wall between. Yielding to a sudden and coarse impulse I gently rapped on the wall.
There was no response, naturally, but I was in no mood to accept a rebuke. A madness was upon me and I repeated the folly, the offence, but again in-effectually, and I had the decency to desist.
'An hour later, while absorbed in some of my in-fernal studies, I heard, or thought I heard, my signal answered. Flinging down my books I sprang to the wall and as steadily as my beating heart would per-mit gave three slow taps upon it. This time the re-sponse was distinct, unmistakable: one, two, three --an exact repetition of my signal. That was all Icould elicit, but it was enough--too much.
'The next evening, and for many evenings after-ward, that folly went on, I always having "the last word." During the whole period I was deliriously happy, but with the perversity of my nature I per-severed in my resolution not to see her. Then, as Ishould have expected, I got no further answers.
