.

"Yet, when she left me here alone, having promised, with downcast eyes
that avoided mine, to place her hand in mine, and walk boldly beside
me down the forbidden path of the world, I fell down on the spot her
feet had pressed, and wept bitterly, as I had never done before in all
my life. Wept over the shattered ideal, the faith I had so wilfully
torn down, the miserable victory of my meanest self.

"I thought the end was come. Fate was merciful to me, however!

"I had myself fixed the following Thursday as the day for our
departure. As I dated a letter to her that night my mind
involuntarily reckoned the days, and I was startled to find that
Thursday fell on that fatal tenth of August.

"I had not thought I could be so tortured in my mind as I was by the
dread that she should notice the dire coincidence.

"She did!

"The hour that should have brought her to me, brought a note instead.
It was dated boldly 'August tenth.' It was without beginning or
signature. It said--I can repeat every word--'Of the two roads to
self-destruction open to me, I have chosen the one that will, in the
end, give the least pain to you. I love you. I have always loved you
since I was a child. I do not regret anything yet! Thank God for me
that I depart without ever having seen a look of weariness in the eyes
that gazed so lovingly into mine when we parted, and thank Him for
yourself that you will never see a look of reproach in mine. I know no
time so fitting to say a long farewell for both of us as
this--Farewell, then.'

"I knew what I should find when I went up the hill.

"The doctors said 'heart disease.' She had been troubled with some
such weakness. I alone knew the truth! As I had known myself, she had
known me!

"You think you suffer--you, who might, but for me, have made her
happy, as such women should be, in a world of simple natural joys! My
friend, loss without guilt is pain--but it is not without the balm of
virtuous compensation. You have at least a right to grieve.

"But I! I am forced to know myself. To feel myself borne along in
spite of myself; and to realize that she who should have worn a crown
of happy womanhood, lies there a sacrifice, to be bewailed like
Jepthah's one fair daughter; and to sit here in full dread of the
ebbing of even this great emotion, knowing too well that it will pass
out of my life when it shall have achieved its purpose, leaving only
as evidence _this_--another great work, crystalized