nd how you choose.

I have been your wife three weeks. The horrible strangeness of these words
is quite beyond me to compass; nevertheless, realize it or not, it is a
fact. I am your wife--you, my husband. Why I am your wife I wish simply to
rehearse here. Not that we do not both know why, but that we may know it
in the same way. You, a handsome, cultivated man, whose dictum is
considered law in the world of fashion in which you move and reign, with
an assured social position, a handsome fortune, and a popularity that
would have obtained for you the hand of any beautiful or wealthy woman
whom you sought, have deliberately chosen to make me, a poor, plain,
brown-faced little school-teacher, your wife. Not because you wanted _me_,
not because you thought or cared about _me_, one way or the other, but
simply because, in a time of urgent necessity, I was literally the only
available woman near you. It chanced, from many points of view and by a
chain of circumstances, that I was particularly available. So you married
me. The reasons for such a sacrifice of yourself were--you had behaved
badly, very badly, to a lady, compromising her name and causing a
separation between herself and her husband. Within a few months, her
husband having died, both herself and her father had determined to force
you to make her reparation by marriage. Going to work very warily, they
had taken an opportunity, after a very luxuriant and fast opera-supper,
when you were excited by your surroundings and flushed by the wine you had
been drinking, your head very light, your judgment very heavy, to draw
from you a promise of marriage at the expiration of the year of mourning
for her husband. As soon as you became aware of what you had done, you
ignominiously fled, and after a Western tour were about to sail for Europe
when this unfortunate accident overtook you. Your narrow escape from
death, upon having been thrown from the carriage of a distinguished
gentleman while driving with him behind a pair of celebrated racers, gave
such publicity to your adventure that your _amorata_ was at once aware of
your whereabouts. The fear of this had taken possession of you as soon as
you were able to think of anything, and the dread that she would follow
and marry you while you lay helpless was made a certainty by this telegram
from an intimate friend in New York, received the sixth day of your
illness:

"It's all up with you, old fellow. The R. has heard you're fast