The Pages Which Follow Have Been Gathered from the Memoranda, Correspondence, and Private Papers Long Preserved Within the House of Aster; Their First Keeper Being No Longer Certainly Remembered.

The evening had withdrawn almost imperceptibly, leaving behind that uncertain light wherein every familiar object appeared to belong as much to remembrance as to the present hour. The gardens of Asters lay without motion; neither leaf nor branch offered itself to the wind, as though the earth had entered into some silent compact with the approaching night. From the open casement there came the fragrance of late blossoms, faint enough to be doubted, yet too constant to be denied.

Neither spoke for some while.

At length she broke the stillness.

"Do you conceive that affection is ever brought to its proper end?”

The gentleman, who until then had occupied himself with the turning of a single dried bloom betwixt his fingers, regarded it for a moment longer before returning his answer.

"I know not that it possesses one.”

She smiled, though with less mirth than resignation.

"Every earthly thing is appointed its conclusion.”

"Every earthly thing, perhaps." He laid the flower upon the table with uncommon care. "Yet I have sometimes suspected that the heart acknowledgeth laws from which the world itself is exempt."

Her eyes wandered towards the garden beyond the glass.

"Then why are there so many who forget?”

"Forgetfulness hath ever been mistaken for the absence of feeling.”

"And is it not?”

"No.”

His reply was delivered with so little haste that it seemed less an argument than a remembrance.

"There are affections which withdraw from speech long before they depart from the breast that harbours them. One ceaseth to name them, not because they are diminished, but because language proveth itself unequal to their continuance.”