nd thrown back to live alone? Perhaps there is a
difference. But this lonesomeness of the heart! If I died, should I
still live and be I, bearing my wormwood with me? A life shattered so
early! "You have broken my globe! you have broken my globe!"

They have come back to Boston, he and she. They came together, and I
saw them. I watched him go up the steps with her, and heard him laugh
when they went in. I sat on a seat in the mall, and watched. He wears a
strange significance for me. I suppose I hate him, really; and yet,
because she loves him, he holds a new and awful interest. It is really
as if _I_ loved him. I think of him with her thoughts; how strong
he is, how black those eyes, how white his hands, how round his voice.
And every thought poisons me, and I roll in my nettles and sting myself
deeper.

... I loved a woman--O God! betrayed! betrayed! Not by her. O God, save
her from punishment and remorse! She was deceived. She shall not
suffer.

... I do not know what God is. I sat thinking of Him an hour in the
dark, last night. All I know is that mankind has made Him. He is the
cry raised by their united voices when they wail. He is the uttermost
anguish of their hearts. They had to call it something, this wail of
terror and grief, and so they called it God. I call it God, too. I lift
up my voice with theirs, and cry, God! God!

... I have taken to following them about the town. They went to the
theatre last night. I sat in the gallery, and looked down on them. How
familiar she seems--how truly mine! Can anybody steal what is mine?
After the theatre I slept a little, and dreamed that we were on a
shore, a silver strip of sands, with the sea black before us. I dragged
her from him, and when I had struck him down, she turned to me, with a
glad, low cry, and clung to me, all warm. She was glad! And I have been
warm about the heart all day, for the remembrance dwells with me. How
beautiful it would be to kill him, if after it was all over she would
turn to me and rest here in my arms!

Once I could have lived through this. There would have been horse and
hound and battle-axe--sword and lance--all the rest of it. I could have
gone away to the wars and worked off some of this horror. And now, like
a rat in a trap, I've got to sit still here and go mad.

[Sidenote: _Mrs. Montrose to Ernest Hume_]

Dear friend,--We have made a wretched botch of it among us, with your
poor boy. Zoe has jilted him. We might have gues