He who loves and runs away
May live to love another day.
I shall always be your friend, and I hope you will continue to answer my letters. You have been a revelation to me in many ways, and my experience in your society can never be forgotten. I am sure I am better for it. Yet I am only mortal, and I can but be rendered unhappy by a continuation of what has been so pleasant. La Bruyéré was right when he said, that friendship was impossible between the sexes. I beg you to forgive the extreme frankness of this letter, and to think of me as your weak, selfish, yet
"Admiring friend,
"Percy Durand."
He sealed and addressed the letter, and rang for a boy to post it. But at that moment a rap sounded at his door, and a telegram was placed in his hands. He tore it open and read:
Paris, France.
"Mrs. Butler is dying; will you come to me?
"Dolores."
Aside from the sorrow he felt at the news of Mrs. Butler's illness, Percy read the telegram with an actual sense of relief. We all remember to have experienced the feeling at some time in our lives, when inclination warred with conscience, and Fate, constituting herself umpire, decided in favor of inclination.
"There is no escaping Destiny. After all, whatever the Power that rules this world, we are
"Impotent pieces of the game he plays,
Upon the checker-board of nights and days,"