“William, I don’t know what will happen.  I can’t make out from Margaret whether she has written to you or not—­she won’t tell me.  If she has, this letter will not be much news to you.  But, mind, I write it of my own free will, and not because Margaret may have forced my hand.  I should have written it anyway.  Poor old darling!—­she thinks me mad and bad, and to-night she tells me she can’t take the responsibility of looking after me any longer.  Women like her can never understand creatures like me—­and I don’t want her to.  She’s a dear saint, and as true as steel—­not like your Mary Lysters!  I could go on my knees to her.  But she can’t control or save me.  Not even you could, William.  You’ve tried your best, and in spite of you I’m going to perdition, and I can’t stop myself.

“For, William, there’s something broken forever between you and me.  I know it was I who did the wrong, and that you had no choice but to leave me when you did.  But yet you did leave me, though I implored you not.  And I know very well that you don’t love me as you used to—­why should you?—­and that you never can love me in the same way again.  Every letter you write tells me that.  And though I have deserved it all, I can’t bear it.  When I think of coming home to England, and how you would try to be nice to me—­how good and dear and magnanimous you would be, and what a beast I should feel—­I want to drown myself and have done.

“It all seems to me so hopeless.  It is my own nature—–­ the stuff out of which I am cut—­that’s all wrong.  I may promise my breath away that I will be discreet and gentle and well behaved, that I’ll behave properly to people like Lady Parham, that I’ll keep secrets, and not make absurd friendships with absurd people, that I’ll try and keep out of debt, and so on.  But what’s the use?  It’s the will in me—­the something that drives, or ought to drive—­that won’t work.  And nobody ever taught me or showed me, that I can remember, till I met you.  In Paris at the Place Vendome, half the time I used to live with maman and papa, be hideously spoiled, dressed absurdly, eat off silver plate, and make myself sick with rich things—­and then for days together maman would go out or away, forget all about me, and I used to storm the kitchen for food.  She either neglected me or made a show of me; she was my worst enemy, and I hated and fought her—­till I went to the convent at ten.  When I was fourteen maman asked a doctor about me.  He said I should probably go mad—­and at the convent they thought the same.  Maman used to throw this at me when she was cross with me.

“Well, I don’t repeat this to make you excuse me and think better of me—–­ it’s all too late for that—­but because I am such a puzzle to myself, and I try to explain things.  I did love you, William—­I believe I do still—­but when I think of our living together again, my arms drop by my side and I feel like a dead creature.  Your life is too