. I find I want you to take up the fardel of
public life; not to be a pessimistic complainer, standing aside with
your hands in your pockets, but a citizen. And if you can do something,
too, for art--but after all, I shall be content if you keep your soul
clean.

[Sidenote: _Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_]

Dear laddie,--I have a great deal to say to you, and I am utterly
incapable of saying it. So the only resource I have is to be short and
trust to your intuitions. You can supply my remorse, and my grief that
life is what it is. We are blind instruments of blinder fate. Captain
Morton came here soon after I did. You knew that. He says plainly that
he came to see me. More than that, he came to see me because he loved
me. If there is anything in love, isn't it this power of one creature
over another? Are we responsible? Are we true to ourselves if we fight
against it? I, at least, could not fight. If my bond to you had been a
thousand times more strong, I should have snapped it like twine. I told
him I would write you that it is broken. I wish life might be good to
you, though I cannot be. And I wish I might never see you again, now,
or after my marriage. I don't say, Forgive me. You can't yet, but some
time perhaps you will.

[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose_]

Dear lady,--Since your letter reached me, I have written you a great many
answers. None of them are worth sending. This is all I tried to say. You
are just as much loved as before, and you are free,--perfectly, entirely
free. It must be for you exactly as if you had never been bound. And you
shall never see me.

[Sidenote: _To the Unknown Friend_]

There must be some outlet for this, or I shall be talking to people in
the street. They will think I am crazy, and that will be the end of it.
So I'll put it all down, madness and all. So Francis Hume came up to
town, did he? And lost his love! He was well enough, poor fool, down in
the woods; but the Great Ones that plague us for their sport sent him a
mirage, and it dazzled him, and he sailed after it. No! no! no! It was
not mirage. It was true--a true, true vision. She is real, and sweet,
and sound, my lady with the merry laugh and seeking eyes. I had her; I
have the vision of her. I wish I did not remember such piercing lines:
"My good days are over!" And poor Thekla,--

"Ich habe gelebt und geliebet."

Here's a supposition. Is a woman betrayed more lost than a man's soul
when it is rejected a