the great
overwhelming thing, goes far to compensate for all the loss it so
terribly exposes. It has brought me, too, the fruit of life's ambition.
With the full revelation of all that I feel for you came that which
gives me place in the world, confers on me the right to open doors
which otherwise were closed to me. You have done this for me, but what
have I done for you? One thing at least is forced upon me, which I must
do now while I have the sight to see and the mind to understand.

"I cannot go on with things as they are. I cannot face Rudyard and give
myself to hourly deception. I think that yesterday, a month ago, I
could have done so, but not now. I cannot walk the path which will be
paved with things revolting to us both. My love for you, damnable as it
would seem in the world's eyes, prevents it. It is not small enough to
be sustained or made secure in its furfilment by the devices of
intrigue. And I know that if it is so with me, it must be a thousand
times so with you. Your beauty would fade and pass under the stress and
meanness of it; your heart would reproach me even when you smiled; you
would learn to hate me even when you were resting upon my hungry heart.
You would learn to loathe the day when you said, Let me help you. Yet,
Jasmine, I know that you are mine; that you were mine long ago, even
when you did not know, and were captured by opportunity to do what,
with me, you felt you could not do. You were captured by it; but it has
not proved what it promised. You have not made the best of the power
into which you came, and you could not do so, because the spring from
which all the enriching waters of married life flow was dry. Poor
Jasmine--poor illusion of a wild young heart which reached out for the
golden city of the mirage!

"But now.... Two ways spread out, and only two, and one of these two I
must take--for your sake. There is the third way, but I will not take
it--for your sake and for my own. I will not walk in it ever. Already
my feet are burned by the fiery path, already I am choked by the smoke
and the ashes. No. I cannot atone for what has been, but I can try and
gather up the chances that are left.

"You must come with me away--away, to start life afresh, somewhere,
somehow; or I must go alone on some enterprise from which I shall not
return. You cannot bear what is, but, together, having braved the
world, we could look into each other's eyes without shrinking, knowing
that we had been