r own." Then there would come a simple "I" as
a signature, and after that some further badinage respecting her
"Cerberus," as she called her brother.

But after that word, that odious word, "enticed," there went another
letter up to London of altogether another nature.

"I have changed my mind again," she said,

and have become aware that, though I should die in doing
it,--though we should both die if it were possible,--there
should be an end of everything between you and me. Yes,
Frank; there! I send you back my troth, and demand my own
in return. After all why should not one die;--hang oneself
if it be necessary? To be self-denying is all that is
necessary,--at any rate to a woman. Hanging or lying down
and dying, or lingering on and saying one's prayers and
knitting stockings, is altogether immaterial. I have
sometimes thought Mudbury to be brutal to me, but I have
never known him to be untrue,--or even, as I believe,
mistaken. He sees clearly and knows what will happen. He
tells me that I have enticed you back. I am not true as
he is. So I threw him back the word in his teeth,--though
its truth at the moment was going like a dagger through
my heart. I know myself to have been selfish, unfeeling,
unfeminine, when I induced you to surrender yourself to
a mode of life which will make you miserable. I have
sometimes been proud of myself because I have loved you so
truly; but now I hate myself and despise myself because I
have been incapable of the first effort which love should
make. Love should at any rate be unselfish.

He tells me that you will be miserable and that the misery
will be on my head,--and I believe him. There shall be an
end of it. I want no promise from you. There may, perhaps,
be a time in which Imogene Docimer as a sturdy old maid
shall be respected and serene of mind. As a wife who had
enticed her husband to his misery she would be respected
neither by him nor by herself,--and as for serenity
it would be quite out of the question. I have been
unfortunate. That is all;--but not half so unfortunate as
others that I see around me.

_Pray_, _pray_, PRAY, take this as final, and thus save
me from renewed trouble and renewed agony.

Now I am yours truly,--
never again will I be affectionate to any one
with true feminine love,

IMOGENE DOCIMER.

Houston when he received the ab