ar about
them. They seem impossible to me now, and almost as if it had all
happened to some one else, so completely have I forgotten the man
except as the source and cause of an immeasurable horror. Yet he
was not bad himself; only ordinary and humdrum. Indeed, I believe
he was very good in ways, or so his brother once assured me. We
would not have been married in the way we were if he had not wanted
to go to the Klondike for the purpose of making money and making
it quickly, so that his means might match mine.

"I do not know which of us two was most to blame for that marriage.
He urged it because he was going so far away and wanted to be sure
of me. I accepted it because it seemed to be romantic and because
it pleased me to have my own way in spite of my hard old guardian
and the teachers, who were always prying about, and the girls, who
went silly over him--for he was really handsome in his way--and
who thought, (at least many of them did,) that he cared for them
when he cared only for me.

"I have hated black eyes for a year. He had black eyes.

"I forgot Cora, or, rather, I did not let any remembrance of her
hinder me. She was a very shadowy person to me in those days. I
had not seen her since we were both children, and as for her
letters--they were almost a bore to me; she lived such a
different life from mine and wrote of so many things I had no
interest in. On my knees I ask her pardon now. I never understood
her. I never understood myself. I was light as thistledown and
blown by every breeze. There came a gust one day which blew me
into the mouth of hell. I am hovering there yet and am sinking,
Francis, sinking--Save me! I love you--I--I--

"It was all planned by him--I have no head for such things.
Sadie helped him--Sadie was my friend--but Sadie had not much to
say about it, for he seemed to know just how to arrange it all so
that no one at the seminary should know or even suspect what had
occurred till we got ready to tell them. He did not even take
his brother into his confidence, for Wallace kept store and
gossiped very much with his customers. Besides, he was very busy
just then selling out, for he was going to the Klondike with
William, and he had too much on his mind to be bothered, or so
William said. All this I must tell you or you will never
understand the temptation which assailed me when, having returned
to Washington, I awoke to my own position and the kind of men whom
I c