ear each
other, should dominate all our thoughts and form the
object of our whole lives, but it is not right that
this love should be our only rule of conduct and our
only obligation. In leaving England we did what is
only permissible to those whose fate has persistently
thwarted all their dreams and destroyed all their
sources of joy. It was an act of liberation and
revolt, which people have a right to perform when
there is no other alternative than death. But is this
the case with us, Simon? What have we done to deserve
happiness? What ordeals have we suffered? What efforts
have we made? What tears have we shed?

"I have done a great deal of thinking, Simon. I have
been thinking of all those poor people who are dead
and gone and whose memory will always make me shudder.
I have thought of you and myself and my mother. Her
too I saw die. You remember: we were speaking of her
and of the pearls which she gave me when dying. They
are lost; and that distresses me so terribly!

"Simon, I don't want to consider this and still less
all the horrors of this awful day as warnings intended
for us two. But I do want them to help us to look at
life in a different way, to help us put up a prouder
and pluckier fight against the obstacles in our path.
The fact that you and I are alive while so many
others are dead forbids us to suffer in ourselves any
sort of weakness, untruth or shuffling, anything that
cannot face the broad light of day.

"Win me, Simon. For my part, I shall deserve you by
confidence and steadfastness. If we are worthy of each
other, we shall succeed and we shall not need to blush
for a happiness for which we should now have to
pay--as I have felt many times to-day--too high a
price of humiliation and shame.

"You will not try to find me, will you, Simon?

"Your promised wife,

"Isabel."

For a few moments Simon stood dumbfounded. As Isabel had foreseen, the
first shock was infinitely painful. His mind was full of conflicting
ideas which eluded his grasp. He did not attempt to understand nor did
he ask himself whether he approved of Isabel's action. He suffered as
he had never known that it was possible to suffer.

And suddenly, in the disorder of his mind, among the incoherent
suppos