ant
colors,--when it was known she had ordered deep mourning, and then she
suddenly disappeared and went with her silent old mother abroad. To this
day no woman in society understands it, for when she came back, long,
long afterwards, it was a subject on which she would never speak. There
were one or two who ventured to ask, and the answer was, "For reasons
that concern me alone." But it took no great power of mental vision to
see that her heart wore black for him forever.

His letter explained it all. She had received it with a paroxysm of
passionate grief and joy, kissed it, covered it with wildest caresses
before she began to read, and then, little by little, as the words
unfolded before her staring eyes, turned cold as stone:

"It is my last night of life, Nina, and I am glad 'tis so. Proud and
sensitive as I am, the knowledge that every man in my regiment has
turned from me,--that I have not a friend among them,--that there is no
longer a place for me in their midst,--more than all, that I _deserve_
their contempt,--has broken my heart. We will be in battle before the
setting of another sun. Any man who seeks death in Indian fight can find
it easily enough, and I can _compel_ their respect in spite of
themselves. They will not recognize me, living, as one of them; but
dying on the field, they have to place me on their roll of honor.

"But now I turn to you. What have I been,--what am I,--to have won such
love as yours? May God in heaven forgive me for my past! All too late I
hate and despise the man I have been,--the man whom you loved. One last
act of justice remains. If I died without it you would mourn me
faithfully, tenderly, lovingly, for years, but if I tell the truth you
will see the utter unworthiness of the man, and your love will turn to
contempt. It is hard to do this, knowing that in doing it I kill the
only genuine regret and dry the only tear that would bless my memory;
but it is the one sacrifice I can make to complete my self-humiliation,
and it is the one thing that is left me that will free you. It will
sting at first, but, like the surgeon's knife, its cut is mercy. Nina,
the very night I came to you on the bluffs, the very night you perilled
your honor to have that parting interview, I went to you with a lie on
my lips. I had told _her_ we were nothing to each other,--you and I.
More than that, I was seeking her love; I hoped I could win her; and had
she loved me I would have turned from you t