nt future before you; one day you would make an
income sufficient for us both. But you seemed so utterly indifferent to
money that I was disappointed. My dreams died out like a fire for want
of fuel.

Had you proposed that I should become your mistress, no power on earth
would have held me back. But you were too honourable even to cherish the
thought. Besides, I let you suppose I was attached to my husband....

I knew well enough that the moment you became aware of my feelings for
you, you would leave no stone unturned until you could legitimately
claim me as your wife.... Such is your nature, Joergen Malthe!

So I let happiness go by.

* * * * *

Two years ago Von Brincken died, leaving me a considerable share of his
fortune--- and a letter, written on the night of the day when we last
met.

I might then have left Richard. Your constancy would have been a
sufficient guarantee for my future.

A mere accident destroyed my illusions. A friend of my own age had
recently married an officer much younger than herself. At the end of a
year's happiness he left her; and society, far from pitying her, laughed
at her plight.

This drove me to make my supreme resolve--to abandon, and flee from, the
one love of my life.

Joergen, I owe you the best hours I have known: those hours in which you
showed me the plans for the "White Villa."

I feel a bitter, yet unspeakable joy when I think that you yourself
built the walls within which I am living in solitary confinement.

Once I longed for you with a consuming ardour.

Now, alas, I am but a pile of burnt-out ashes. The winds of heaven have
dispersed my dreams.

I go on living because it is not in my nature to do away with myself. I
live, and shall continue to live.

If only you knew what goes on within me, and how low I have sunk that I
can write this confession!

There are thoughts that a woman can never reveal to the man she
loves--even if her own life and his were at stake....

It is night. The stars are bright overhead. Joergen Malthe, why have I
written all this to you?... What do I really want of you?...

* * * * *

No, no!... never in this world....

You shall never read this letter. Never, never! What need you know more
than that I love you? I love you! I love you!

I will write to you again, calmly, humbly, and tell you the simple
truth: I was afraid of the future, and of the time when you w