hic accents.

'How could you treat me so, knowing my friendship and even my foolish
fondness? Was it not cruel to urge me as you did? I will confess to you
what I have striven in vain to disguise. Had we met in earlier days, had
I known you before I was bound in honour to the course I am compelled
to run until my footsteps lead me to my grave, I might have been a
happy woman. But a woman may love, and may yet place her honour before
everything. I shall not care if, when I am dead and gone, you choose to
boast that you won a woman's heart, and I will not even put you on
your honour now to keep this silly secret; but you shall not go from me
without my assurance of this one fact. When I married, marriage was to
me a sacrament, and if it were not for that------ But no more of this,
dear Paul Dear, dear, and dearest Paul! I hardly know how I am writing,
but the anguish you have caused me is unspeakable, and I am not guarded
in my words. A woman's heart may err, and her principle of honour may
yet be strong. I bid you good-bye with an aching heart, and I wish you
all good fortune. It would seem that our stars are in opposition to each
other, and fighting against each other in their courses. I agree with
you in thinking that we are best apart, but I shall watch your career
with a more than sisterly devotion, and my heart tells me that I shall
have the right to acclaim your future.'

The letter said much more than this so far as the mere extension of the
same sentiments might appear to be concerned, but in effect this was all
until the final paragraph was reached.

'I have adhered to duty,' this ran, 'and I will. Nothing--neither the
thought of your suffering nor of my own--shall draw me from it, but I
recognise none the less the kindred soul I should have met had I been
fortunate--as I am far from being. Write this in your private memoirs
of me: "She loved too well, yet wisely," and think sometimes that it is
possible for a woman to feel sometimes like a man, and to think I "could
not love thee, dear, so well, loved I not honour more."

'I shall not add another word to this,' Gertrude concluded, 'except to
say, I wish you all prosperity, all happiness. But just this remember
always, that if I were a mischievous influence in your life, I meant it
far otherwise, and I am always your devoted friend and well-wisher.

'G. DEW.'

For some reason or another by no means clear to himself the letter moved
Paul less than it seemed