he could get of mine, and then left me and the State, and took himself to Texas;—­where he drank himself to death.  I did not follow him, and in his absence I was divorced from him in accordance with the laws of Kansas State.  I then went to San Francisco about property of my mother’s, which my husband had fraudulently sold to a countryman of ours now resident in Paris,—­having forged my name.  There I met you, and in that short story I tell you all that there is to be told.  It may be that you do not believe me now; but if so, are you not bound to go where you can verify your own doubts or my word?

I try to write dispassionately, but I am in truth overborne by passion.  I...