that was my life, and give me
nothing--nothing in return!

Do you remember how I begged you not to make me marry you; but you
urged me, and because I loved you and trusted you, I did? how I
entreated you not to make me marry you secretly, but you insisted,
and loving you, I did? how you promised you would leave me at the
altar and not see me till you came again to claim me openly for your
wife, and you broke that sacred promise? Do you remember--my
husband!

Do you remember that night in the garden when the wind came moaning
up from the sea? Do you remember how you took me in your arms, and
even while I listened to your tender and assuring words, in that
moment--ah, the hurt and the wrong and the shame of it! Afterwards
in the strange confusion, in my blind helplessness I tried to say,
"But he loved me," and I tried to forgive you. Perhaps in time I
might have made myself believe I did; for then I did not know you as
you are--and were; but understanding all now I feel that in that
hour I really ceased to love you; and when at last I knew you had
denied me, love was buried for ever.

Your worst torment is to come, mine has already been with me. When
my miseries first fell upon me, I thought that I must die. Why
should I live on--why should I not die? The sea was near, and it
buries deep. I thought of all the people that live on the great
earth, and I said to myself that the soul of one poor girl could not
count, that it could concern no one but myself. It was clear to me
--I must die and end all.

But there came to me a voice in the night which said: "Is thy life
thine own to give or to destroy?" It was clearer than my own
thinking. It told my heart that death by one's own hand meant
shame; and I saw then that to find rest I must drag unwilling feet
over the good name and memory of my dead loved ones. Then I
remembered my mother. If you had remembered her perhaps you would
have guarded the gift of my love and not have trampled it under your
feet--I remembered my mother, and so I live still.

I must go on alone, with naught of what makes life bearable; you
will keep climbing higher by your vanity, your strength, and your
deceit. But yet I know however high you climb you will never find
peace. You will remember me, and your spirit will seek in vain for
rest. You will not exist for me, you will not be eve