ing:

DEAR MR. MATHEWS: I am writing you of business, for one thing, and
because I feel that I must, for another. I have paid for a
tombstone suitable for Bells Park, whom I esteemed more than I
have most men. And I have paid for its delivery to you, knowing
that you will have it mounted in place. So you must pay nothing
for it in any form, as I wish to stand all the expense in memory
of an old and tried friend. I have left Goldpan for good and all,
and all those old associations of my life. I am starting over
again, to make a good and clean fight, in clean surroundings. I am
sick to death of all that has made up my life. I am bitter,
knowing that I was handicapped from the start. My father educated
me because it was easier to have me in a boarding school in all my
girlhood than to have me with him. I never knew my mother. I had
no love bestowed upon me in my girlhood. When I came of age my
father, who was an adventurer of the discredited gentleman type,
gave me to a friend of his. I learned a year after I had been
married that I had been sold to my husband--God save the mark! I
tried to be patient when he dragged me from camp to camp, and I
want to say that whatever else I have been, I have been good. You
understand me, I hope, because I am defending myself to you, the
only living being for whose esteem I care. I have had two happy
moments in my life--one when the news was brought me that my
husband had shot himself across a gambling table, and the second
when you faced me that night after Bells Park was killed, alone
there in the street after your partner had gone on, and said:
"Lily, it hurts you as it does me. You're on the level, little
pal. I want to stop long enough to tell you I believe in you."
Then you went on, and I shall not see you again.

I am writing this from a place I shall leave before it starts to
you. You could not find me if you had the desire, and so I say to
you that which perhaps I never should have said, if we had
remained in sight of each other in the Blue Mountains. You are the
only man I have ever met who made me heartsick because I was not
worthy of him, and could not aspire to his level. You are the only
man I have ever loved so much that it was an ache. You are the
only man who told me by the look in his eyes, that he thought my
life unworthy, and accused me without words every time we met. I
am through with it,