Letters of Two Brides

THE SAME TO THE SAME

March.

I am dressed in white--white camellias in my hair, and another in my

hand. My mother has red camellias; so it would not be impossible to

take one from her--if I wished! I have a strange longing to put off

the decision to the last moment, and make him pay for his red camellia

by a little suspense.

What a vision of beauty! Griffith begged me to stop for a little and

be admired. The solemn crisis of the evening and the drama of my

secret reply have given me a color; on each cheek I sport a red

camellia laid upon a white! 1 A. M.

Everybody admired me, but only one adored. He hung his head as I

entered with a white camellia, but turned pale as the flower when,

later, I took a red one from my mother's hand. To arrive with the two

flowers might possibly have been accidental; but this deliberate

action was a reply. My confession, therefore, is fuller than it need

have been. The opera was Romeo and Juliet. As you don't know the duet of the

two lovers, you can't understand the bliss of two neophytes in love,

as they listen to this divine outpouring of the heart.

On returning home I went to bed, but only to count the steps which

resounded on the sidewalk. My heart and head, darling, are all on fire

now. What is he doing? What is he thinking of? Has he a thought, a

single thought, that is not of me? Is he, in very truth, the devoted

slave he painted himself? How to be sure? Or, again, has it ever

entered his head that, if I accept him, I lay myself open to the

shadow of a reproach or am in any sense rewarding or thanking him? I

am harrowed by the hair-splitting casuistry of the heroines in Cyrus

and Astraea, by all the subtle arguments of the court of love.

Has he any idea that, in affairs of love, a woman's most trifling

actions are but the issue of long brooding and inner conflicts, of

victories won only to be lost! What are his thoughts at this moment?

How can I give him my orders to write every evening the particulars of

the day just gone? He is my slave whom I ought to keep busy. I shall

deluge him with work! Sunday Morning.

Only towards morning did I sleep a little. It is midday now. I have

just got Griffith to write the following letter:

"To the Baron de Macumer.

"Mademoiselle de Chaulieu begs me, Monsieur le Baron, to ask you

to return to her the copy of a letter written to her by a friend,

which is in her own handwriting, and which you carried away.

--Believe me, etc.,

"GRIFFITH."