ng too much, I let the pleasure I
might have caught, slip from me. I cannot live with you, I ought
not, if you form another attachment. But I promise you, mine shall
not be intruded on you. Little reason have I to expect a shadow of
happiness, after the cruel disappointments that have rent my heart;
but that of my child seems to depend on our being together. Still,
I do not wish you to sacrifice a chance of enjoyment for an
uncertain good. I feel a conviction that I can provide for her, and
it shall be my object, if we are indeed to part to meet no more.
Her affection must not be divided. She must be a comfort to me, if
I am to have no other, and only know me as her support. I feel that
I cannot endure the anguish of corresponding with you, if we are
only to correspond. No; if you seek for happiness elsewhere, my
letters shall not interrupt your repose. I will be dead to you. I
cannot express to you what pain it gives me to write about an
eternal separation. You must determine. Examine yourself. But, for
God's sake! spare me the anxiety of uncertainty! I may sink under
the trial; but I will not complain."

He seems to have written to her regularly. At times she reproached him
for not letting her hear from him, but at others she acknowledged the
receipt of three and five letters in one morning. If these had been
preserved, hers would not seem as importunate as they do now, for he gave
her reason to suppose that he was anxious for a reunion, and wrote in a
style which she told him she may have deserved, but which she had not
expected from him. She also referred to his admission that her words
tortured him; and there was talk of a trip together to Switzerland. But
at the same time his proofs of indifference forced her to declare that
she and pleasure had shaken hands. "How often," she breaks out in her
agony, "passing through the rocks, I have thought, 'But for this child, I
would lay my head on one of them, and never open my eyes again!'" The
only particular in which he remained firm was his unwillingness to give a
final decision in what, to her, was the one all-important matter. His
vacillating behavior was heartless in the extreme. Her suspense became
unbearable, and all her letters contained entreaties for him to relieve
it. She was ready, once he said the word, to undertake to support her
child and herself. But the fiat must come from