who I was. Among the honest women in my
own station in life, where could I have found the like of _her_? Could
_they_ walk as she walked? and look as she looked? When _they_ gave me a
kiss, did their lips linger over it as hers did? Had _they_ her skin, her
laugh, her foot, her hand, her touch? _She_ never had a speck of dirt on
her: I tell you her flesh was a perfume. When she embraced me, her arms
folded round me like the wings of angels; and her smile covered me softly
with its light like the sun in heaven. I leave you to laugh at me, or to
cry over me, just as your temper may incline. I am not trying to excuse
myself--I am trying to explain. You are gentle-folks; what dazzled and
maddened _me_, is everyday experience to _you_. Fallen or not, angel or
devil, it came to this--she was a lady; and I was a groom.

Before the house was astir, I got her away (by the workmen's train) to a
large manufacturing town in our parts.

Here--with my savings in money to help her--she could get her outfit of
decent clothes and her lodging among strangers who asked no questions so
long as they were paid. Here--now on one pretense and now on another--I
could visit her, and we could both plan together what our future lives
were to be. I need not tell you that I stood pledged to make her my wife.
A man in my station always marries a woman of her sort.

Do you wonder if I was happy at this time? I should have been perfectly
happy but for one little drawback. It was this: I was never quite at my
ease in the presence of my promised wife.

I don't mean that I was shy with her, or suspicious of her, or ashamed of
her. The uneasiness I am speaking of was caused by a faint doubt in my
mind whether I had not seen her somewhere, before the morning when we met
at the doctor's house. Over and over again, I found myself wondering
whether her face did not remind me of some other face--_what_ other I
never could tell. This strange feeling, this one question that could never
be answered, vexed me to a degree that you would hardly credit. It came
between us at the strangest times--oftenest, however, at night, when the
candles were lit. You have known what it is to try and remember a
forgotten name--and to fail, search as you may, to find it in your mind.
That was my case. I failed to find my lost face, just as you failed to
find your lost name.

In three weeks we had talked matters over, and had arranged how I was to
make a clean breast of it at hom