you a sad story: you
will have to go back with me very far; you will have to hear of sins of
which you never dreamed in your dear innocence. I would spare you if I
could, but you must know, for you must forgive me. And when you have
heard, you may cease to love, but I think you will forgive. Listen."

Why should I repeat that terrible disclosure? why harrow my soul with
going back over that dark path? Let me try to forget that such sins,
such wrongs, such revenges, ever stained a human life. I was so young,
so innocent, so ignorant. It was a strange misfortune that I should have
had to know that which aged and changed me so. But he was right in
saying that I had to know it. My life was bound involuntarily to his by
my love, and what concerned him was my fate. Alas! He was in no other
way bound to me than by my love: nor ever could be.

I don't know whether I was prepared for it or not: I knew that something
terrible and final was to come, and I felt the awe that attends the
thoughts that words are final and time limited. But when I heard the
fatal truth--that another woman lived to whom he was irrevocably
bound--I heard it as in a dream, and did not move or speak. I think I
felt for a moment as if I were dead, as if I had passed out of the ranks
of the living into the abodes of the silent, and benumbed, and
pulseless. There was such a horrible awe, and chill, and check through
all my young and rapid blood. It was like death by freezing. It is not
so pleasant as they say, believe me. But no pain: that came afterward,
when I came to life, when I felt the touch of his hand on mine, and
ceased to hear his cruel words.

I had shrunk back from him in my chair, and sat, I suppose, like a
person in a trance, with my hands in my lap, and my eyes fixed on him
with bewilderment. But when he ceased to speak--and, leaning forward on
one knee, clasped my hands in his, and drew me toward him, then indeed I
knew I was not dead. Oh, the agony of those few moments--I tried to
rise, to go away from him. But he held me with such strength--all his
weakness was gone now. He folded his arms around my waist and held me as
in a vise. Then suddenly leaning his head down upon my arms, he kissed
my hands, my arms, my dress, with a moan of bitter anguish.

"Not mine," he murmured. "Never mine but in my dreams. O wretched
dreams, that drive me mad. Pauline, they will tell us that we must not
dream--we must not weep, we must be stocks and stones.