is sake, would have annihilated herself, had that been
possible. Again and again, since that horrible apparition had showed
itself in her room at St. Louis, she had begged that she might leave
him,--not on her own behalf, not from any dread of the crime that she was
committing, not from shame in regard to herself should her secret be found
out, but because she felt herself to be an impediment to his career in the
world. As to herself, she had no pricks of conscience. She had been true
to the man,--brutal, abominable as he had been to her,--until she had in
truth been made to believe that he was dead; and even when he had
certainly been alive,--for she had seen him,--he had only again seen her,
again to desert her. Duty to him she could owe never. There was no sting
of conscience with her in that direction. But to the other man she owed,
as she thought, everything that could be due from a woman to a man. He
had come within her ken, and had loved her without speaking of his love.
He had seen her condition, and had sympathised with her fully. He had
gone out, with his life in his hand,--he, a clergyman, a quiet man of
letters,--to ascertain whether she was free; and finding her, as he
believed, to be free, he had returned to take her to his heart, and to
give her all that happiness which other women enjoy, but which she had
hitherto only seen from a distance. Then the blow had come. It was
necessary, it was natural, that she should be ruined by such a blow.
Circumstances had ruined her. That fate had betaken her which so often
falls upon a woman who trusts herself and her life to a man. But why
should he fall also with her fall? There was still a career before him.
He might be useful; he might be successful; he might be admired.
Everything might still be open to him,--except the love of another woman.
As to that, she did not doubt his truth. Why should he be doomed to drag
her with him as a log tied to his foot, seeing that a woman with a
misfortune is condemned by the general voice of the world, whereas for a
man to have stumbled is considered hardly more than a matter of course?
She would consent to take from him the means of buying her bread; but it
would be better,--she had said,--that she should eat it on her side of the
water, while he might earn it on the other.

We know what had come of these arguments. He had hitherto never left her
for a moment since that man had again appeared before their eyes. He