Are there any sorrows like these sorrows of our youth?
Can any bitterness equal the bitterness of such good-byes?
I know but one of which I was fated to taste in after years, and that shall be told of in its place.

It is a common jest to mock at early love, but if it be real, if it be something more than the mere arising of the passions, early love is late love also; it is love for ever, the best and worst event which can befall a man or woman.

I say it who am old and who have done with everything, and it is true.
One thing I have forgotten.

As we kissed and clung in our despair behind the bole of the great beech, Lily drew a ring from her finger and pressed it into my hand saying, 'Look on this each morning when you wake, and think of me.' It had been her mother's, and to-day it still is set upon my withered hand, gleaming in the winter sunlight as I trace these words.

Through the long years of wild adventure, through all the time of after peace, in love and war, in the shine of the camp fire, in the glare of the sacrificial flame, in the light of lonely stars illumining the lonely wilderness, that ring has shone upon my hand, reminding me always of her who gave it, and on this hand it shall go down into the grave.