ou could, William.
You've tried your best, and in spite of you I'm going to perdition, and
I can't stop myself.

"For, William, there's something broken forever between you and me. I
know it was I who did the wrong, and that you had no choice but to leave
me when you did. But yet you <i>did</i> leave me, though I implored you not.
And I know very well that you don't love me as you used to--why should
you?--and that you never can love me in the same way again. Every letter
you write tells me that. And though I have deserved it all, I can't
bear it. When I think of coming home to England, and how you would try
to be nice to me--how good and dear and magnanimous you would be, and
what a beast I should feel--I want to drown myself and have done.

"It all seems to me so hopeless. It is my own nature--- the stuff out of
which I am cut--that's all wrong. I may promise my breath away that I
will be discreet and gentle and well behaved, that I'll behave properly
to people like Lady Parham, that I'll keep secrets, and not make absurd
friendships with absurd people, that I'll try and keep out of debt, and
so on. But what's the use? It's the <i>will</i> in me--the something that
drives, or ought to drive--that won't work. And nobody ever taught me or
showed me, that I can remember, till I met you. In Paris at the Place
Vendome, half the time I used to live with maman and papa, be hideously
spoiled, dressed absurdly, eat off silver plate, and make myself sick
with rich things--and then for days together maman would go out or away,
forget all about me, and I used to storm the kitchen for food. She
either neglected me or made a show of me; she was my worst enemy, and I
hated and fought her--till I went to the convent at ten. When I was
fourteen maman asked a doctor about me. He said I should probably go
mad--and at the convent they thought the same. Maman used to throw this
at me when she was cross with me.

"Well, I don't repeat this to make you excuse me and think better of
me--- it's all too late for that--but because I am such a puzzle to
myself, and I try to explain things. I <i>did</i> love you, William--I
believe I do still--but when I think of our living together again, my
arms drop by my side and I feel like a dead creature. Your life is too
great a thing for me. Why should I spoil or hamper it? If you loved me,
as you did once--if you still thought <i>everything</i> worth while, then, if
I had a spark of decency left, I mi