my life is over and done and closed for ever and I
will try not to look back or think of it too much. And I shall tell you
the same as if I were making some solemn vow, that I will not try any
more to regain the love I have lost."

This resolution of Marie's seemed to have helped her considerably, for
her later letters are not quite so exclusively concerned with the
unhappy aspect of her relations with Terry. The strong vitality of mind
and temperament which enabled this factory girl and prostitute to adjust
herself to a relatively intellectual and distinguished existence still
stood her in good stead, and enabled her to meet the present deeply
tragic situation step by step and not go under: her youth and vitality
and her love of life triumphed, as we shall see, over even this terrible
rupture; the consolatory philosophy of anarchism, which had educated
her, largely fell away, with the love of the man who had created it for
her. But the work of the social propagandist has been done on Marie: the
woman is a thoroughly self-conscious individual, as capable of leading
her life as only are very few really distinguished personalities. Her
next letter shows again a more general interest, though still largely
concerned with Terry:

"The other night Terry spoke for the Social Science League on 'The
Lesson of the Haymarket'--referring, as you know, to the hanging of the
anarchists in 1886. _The Saturday Evening Post_ had quite a lengthy
notice about it the day before the lecture, and nearly all the morning
papers spoke of it the day after. The lecture hall was well filled with
people who do not usually attend the S. S. League. And I think these
people, who were not radical, were much shocked and disappointed, for
Terry was not a bit gentle and well-mannered, nor as philosophical as he
nearly always is. I thought his lecture good, though there was something
forced about it. Perhaps because he no longer has so much faith was the
cause of his greater violence. It was as if he was trying to remember
what he had once felt; and that made the expression rougher than if it
had been more spontaneous. I really do not believe that he is, at
bottom, at all violent. But he tried to be so in this lecture. He
advocated assassination and regicide and other most violent and
blood-curdling things. His voice and manner, however, in saying these
terrible things were not at all convincing. When replying to the
critics, he was most violent, and was