ept in the service of true art. But as it was--a broken man, a
disgraced life--that very stolidity that helped me to bear my
fate alone, dulled my susceptibility to all that was base in my
money-getting. It was all one, after all.

"And yet, for all that, the old defiance, the old peasant's pride was
not quite dead in me even now. One day, in the midst of my work, the
thought came over me--'What is she doing now?--who is with her?' Then I
sprang to my feet as if I had been stung by an adder, and immediately
sat down and wrote to her that I thought it would be more dignified and
better for us both to cut the last wretched bond that held us together,
so that she might have full freedom. I added that I would provide for
her all the same, if she would only consent to a legal separation. I
was not ashamed to humiliate myself so far as to beg her to do this. It
seemed to me as if the happiness of my future life depended upon my
accomplishing this end.

"She kept me waiting for an answer for more than a fortnight. Then she
wrote that she could only yield to my request if I would give up the
child to her. Who dictated this answer for her, I do not know.
Certainly not her heart.

"Give the child into her hands! I would rather have caught it up like a
kitten, and thrown it into the sea! I had found a family here--good,
honest people--to whose care I could intrust it, and with whose
children it is growing up. I myself have a room under the same roof.
When I come home of an evening, I only need to open the door a little
to see the little motherless thing asleep in its bed. But on Sunday I
either stay at home in the afternoon, or take a drive or a walk with it
to some place where I am sure of not meeting any curious acquaintances,
who might ask me whose child it is. I pass in the city for unmarried.
But, for some time past, I have been led to suspect that I have an
enemy who is determined I shall not bear that character any longer.
Lucie's mother appeared here a year or two ago. Had I known this woman
before my marriage, I might perhaps have been warned not to trust those
violet eyes. She has some hidden object for being here; she follows all
my movements--I know that she wishes me ill--that letter to you
confirms it. But, perhaps, it was better so. The letter that I wrote to
you last night, who knows whether I should have had the courage to send
it to-day? And yet, every hour longer that I kept you in the dark would
have been a