uld say, dearest. "She gave up everything for love
of me, choosing poverty, obscurity, and pain above wealth and rank and
ease, and therefore I will choose her before everything else in the
world." But I know what would come to us in the end, dear, and I should
always feel that your love for me had dragged you down, closed many of
the doors of life to you. I should know that you were always hearing
behind you the echoing footsteps of my fate, and that is the only thing
I could not bear.

Besides, my darling, there is something else between us in this
world--the Divine Commandment! Our blessed Lord says we can never be man
and wife, and there is no getting beyond that, is there?

Oh, don't think I reproach myself with loving you--that I think it a sin
to do so. I do not now, and never shall. He who made my heart what it is
must know that I am doing no wrong.

And don't think I regret that night at Castle Raa. If I have to answer
to God for that I will do so without fear, because I know He will know
that, when the cruelty and self-seeking of others were trying to control
my most sacred impulses, I was only claiming the right He gave me to be
mistress of myself and sovereign of my soul.

_You_ must not regret it either, dearest, or reproach yourself in any
way, for when we stand together before God's footstool He will see that
from the beginning I was yours and you were mine, and He will cover us
with the wings of His loving mercy.

Then don't think, dear, that I have ever looked upon what happened
afterwards--first in Ellan and then in London--as, in any sense, a
punishment. I have never done that at any time, and now I believe from
the bottom of my heart that, if I suffered while you were away, it was
not for my sin but my salvation.

Think, dear! If you and I had never met again after my marriage, and if
I had gone on living with the man they had married me to, my soul would
have shrivelled up and died. That is what happens to the souls of so
many poor women who are fettered for life to coarse and degrading
husbands. But my soul has not died, dearest, and it is not dying,
whatever my poor body may do, so I thank my gracious God for the sweet
and pure and noble love that has kept it alive.

All the same, my darling, to marry again is another matter. I took my
vow before the altar, dear, and however ignorantly I took it, or under
whatever persuasion or constraint, it is registered in heaven.

It cannot be for not