mebody else; or love
somebody else without forgetting. Love is simple and gentle and, I
suppose, gives way. Alexander doesn't give way. I shall hurt you
now, I'm afraid, but I must say it. After him there can be no other
man for me. I think I'm sorry I ever married him, for I could have
loved somebody else and yet looked on at him. Or couldn't I? You'll
say I couldn't. Anyhow, as it is, I've come too near to him, seen
too much of him, become too much a part of him. You might think me
mad if I told you he often seemed to be with me and that I'm not
frightened, but admire and laugh as I used; I needn't fear any more.
So it is; and since it is so, how can I come to you? What is it they
call widows on tombstones and in the _Times_? Relicts, isn't it? I'm
literally his relict, something he's left behind. As I say, the only
thing. He can't come back for me, I suppose. But I feel as if he'd
pick me up somewhere some time, and we should begin over again, and
go on together. Where to I don't know. I never knew where he would
end by taking me to. And you, dear friend, mustn't make his relict
your wife. It's not right for you, it wouldn't be right for me. We
should pretend that nothing had happened, that I'd made a mistake,
that it was luckily and happily over, and that I was doing now what
I ought to have done in the beginning. All that's quite false. I
suppose everybody has one great thing to do in life, one thing that
determines what they're to be and how they're to end. I did my great
thing, for good or evil, when I became his wife. I can't undo it or
go back on it, I can't become what I was before I did it. I can't be
now what you think me and wish me to be. His stamp is on me.

I write very sadly; for I didn't love him. And now I can love
nobody. I shall never quite know what that means. Or is it possible
that I loved him without knowing it, and hated him sometimes just
because of that? I mean, felt so terribly the times when he
was--well, what you know he was sometimes. I find no answer to that.
It never was what I thought love meant, what they tell you it means.
But if love can mean sinking yourself in another person, living in
and through him, meaning him when you say life, then I did love him.
At any rate, whatever it was, there it is. Yet I'm not very unhappy.
I have a feeling--it wi