In other times with other manners, I
might have killed him. If I had loved her, I might; I cannot tell.
But I went home.

She seemed glad that I knew. And she begged that I would divorce her
and let her marry him.

Dear Clear Eyes, who read this, what do you think of me? Of this story?

And what did I think? I who had dreamed, and studied and preached, and
had never--lived? I who had hated the sordid? I who had thought
myself so high?

As I married her, so I gave her a divorce. And as I would not have her
name and mine smirched, I separated myself from her, and she won her
plea on the ground of desertion.

Do you know what that meant in my life? It meant that I must give up
my church. It meant that I must be willing to bear the things which
might be said of me. Even if the truth had been known, there would
have been little difference, except in the sympathy which would have
been vouchsafed me as the injured party. And I wanted no man's pity.

And so I went forth, deprived of the right to lift up my voice and
preach--deprived of the right to speak to the thousands who had packed
my church. And now--what meaning for me had the candles on the altar,
what meaning the voices in the choir? I had sung too, in the light of
the holy candles, but it was ordained that my voice must be forever
still.

I fought my battle out one night in the darkness of my church. I
prayed for light and I saw none. Oh, Clear Eyes, why is light given to
a man whose way is hid? I went forth from that church convinced that
it was all a sham. That the lights meant nothing; that the music meant
less, and that what I had preached had been a poetic fallacy.

Some of the people of my church still believe in me. Others, if you
should meet them, would say that she was a saint, and that I was the
sinner. Well, if my sin was weakness, I confess it. I should,
perhaps, never have married her; but having married her, could I have
held her mine against her will?

She married him. And a year after, she died. She was a frail little
thing, and I have nothing harsh to say of her. In a sense she was a
victim, first of her mother's ambition, next of my lack of love, and
last of all, of his pursuit.

Perhaps I should not have told you this. Except my Bishop, who asked
for the truth, and to whom I gave it, and whose gentleness and kindness
are never-to-be-forgotten things--except for him, you are the only one
I have ever told; the only