The story was not an uncommon one.

At sixteen he had dreamed-and told his dream.

At eighteen he had awoke, and found, as he believed, that a young heart had grown to his so that its life was dependent on his own.

Whether it would have perished if its filaments had been gently disentangled from the object to which they had attached themselves, experienced judges of such matters may perhaps question.

To justify Clement in his estimate of the danger of such an experiment, we must remember that to young people in their teens a first passion is a portentous and unprecedented phenomenon.