hanked God
for that--no, I did not thank God; I never thought of God in that
moment of my blind feeling about for a chink and a spring in the
wall. I thought only of your impatience, and the people waiting,
and the pleasure of days to come when, free from this intolerable
bond, I could keep my place at your side and bear your name
unreproved and taste to the full the awe and delight of a passion
such as few women ever feel, because few women were ever loved by
a man like you. Had my thoughts been elsewhere, my fingers might
have forgotten to fumble along that wall, and I had been simply
wretched to-day,--and innocent. Innocent! O, where in God's
universe can I be made innocent again and fit to look in your face
and to love--heart-breaking thought--even to love you again?

"To turn and turn a miserable crank after those moments of frenzied
action and silence that was the hard part-that was what tried my
nerve and first robbed me of calmness. But I dared not leave that
fearful thing dangling there; I had to wind. The machinery squeaked,
and its noise seemed to fill the house, but no one came nor did the
door below open. Sometimes I have wished that it had. I should not
then have been lured on and you would not have become involved in
my ruin.

"I have heard many say that I looked radiant when I came down to be
married. The radiance was in their thoughts. Or if my face did
shine, and if I moved as if treading on air, it was because I had
triumphed over all difficulties and could pass down to the altar
without fear of that interrupting voice crying out: `I forbid! She
is mine! The wife of William Pfeiffer can not wed another!' No
such words could be dreaded now. The lips which might have spoken
them were dumb. I forgot that fleshless lips gibber loudest, and
that a lifetime, long or short, lay before me, in which to hear
them mumble and squeak their denunciation and threats. Oh, but I
have been wretched! At ball and dinner and dance those lips have
been ever at my ear, but most when we have sat alone together; most
then; Oh, most then!

"He is avenged; but you! Who will avenge you, and where will you
ever find happiness?

"To blot myself from your memory I would go down deeper into the
vale of suffering than ever I have gone yet. But no, no! do not
quite forget me. Remember me as you saw me one night--the night
you took the flower out of my hair and kissed it, saying that
Washington held many bea