STAGE THREE

Dear Peter:

I knew it would come. But I wished to put it off until the chance for a change was impossible. I’ve waited years for the time. I had planned in my mind how I should do this thing I am about to do, with infinite care. Each step was watched and taken even as the blind walk, even when I left the house I intended to do this thing.

I wonder if you have ever read, “The Woman in White”? And if in the reading you remember Count Fosco? You know he is the only fat villain in any book. One thing he did I want to draw to your mind. It is the most trivial thing in the whole book. You know, if you have read the book, that after he was discovered and the things he had done were set before him in all their hideousness, he sat down and wrote his confessions. They covered innumerable sheets. The description by Collins of how he gradually became buried in the pages is wonderfully drawn. You could see him, Fosco, with the perspiration pouring down his fat face, and his hand holding the pen flying over the sheets. I shall be Fosco buried in sheets. That will, however, be my only likeness to him, for I do not consider myself a villain. I am merely a woman.

Let’s see. This is a very difficult task. I do not know where to begin. Shall I start at this end? Or shall I take it up from the time I left the house? Our house. I was horribly alone. You will never understand how poignantly alone I was; but that is neither here nor there.

I’ve decided, even in the writing of these first lines where I shall begin. I am going to start with the now and go back. That is I mean to, but I do not promise to keep it up. It is a long story—a miserable history. I’ve sought for breaks in it, but I’ve discovered none. Remember, Peter, I am not sorry. I feel precisely as I did about the whole matter, as I did the day I walked from the house. I’ve not relented, even at this late date. I am not sorry; I do not regret. I repeat this statement in order that it may be impressed clearly upon your mind. I don’t want you to think I am pleading for pity. I am not. I neither crave your sympathy nor your change of feeling. I hope you get this point exactly.

How time flies. You are sixty-two. I am forty-eight. We are both going down the hill, and we are going down alone. It might have been otherwise. The boy is twenty-three. I saw him when he was fifteen. I saw him again when he was twenty, and again when he was twenty-one. I went where he was out of idle curiosity. I wanted to see what this thing of my flesh and blood had grown into. I was pleased and I was not. I thought he ought to have looked better. I wondered what he would have been under my influence, and had had the advantage of a mother’s love. My friends tell me that a boy needs this sort of thing to lift him over the hard places. Curiously enough I didn’t want to speak to him. I didn’t long to hold him in my arms, nor did I feel any desire to have him know me. I wonder whether that is normal. Most mothers, I suppose, would have gone to him and taken him in their arms, and begged him in a melodramatic way for his love. I desired no such thing. It may be that my life has been confused. I don’t know. However, that is neither here nor there. When I left you he was buried. I always looked upon him as a disgrace. He was not in my mind purely born. He was my stigma. So, he is of me and not of me. I will speak of him no more.

I look back upon my life as a series of developments. First, my youth—full of hope, gay, protected, luxurious, a timid child with no conception of life, a thing raised untutored, pushed into a willing marriage. I wanted to marry you. It was a consuming desire upon my part. I hoped so and I loved so. I thought you were wonderful. It gave me a thrill when you came home. I looked upon you as a super-man—unconquerable. Then gradually the veil was rent asunder. You did the tearing and you did it thoroughly. You destroyed me. I, however, felt it come and I tried hard to fight it out. My aim was to conquer the thing so that you and I, Peter, should lead an ideal existence—that we should have children, that love should radiate about us, like a glorious sun, on a glorious summer day. You killed this. You wanted money, success—futile, necessary money.

Remember, Peter, I don’t blame you for all the misfortune, as I may have been equally at fault. I couldn’t advance as rapidly as you did. I suppose it arose from the fact that I wanted you and not the world. I wanted children, and I wanted a home. I wanted to be separated from the frivolities of life. I wanted the burden of your happiness.

It may have been my fault in that I wanted to have you believe that in me and in me alone was the lodestar of all your hopes. In the development of that part of me, with no end of thought, I failed. I’ve always failed. I can’t understand why, but the fact remains.

I remember—it was a long time ago, many, many years. With what perturbation I was filled that first time you went away without kissing me goodbye. That was a tiny omission, but it was an interstice. Then I knew it came out of the blue. I knew I was slipping, that outside things were grasping you, and I sensed this thing clearly. Then I fought—I fought to recover, but although I fought I lost. I lost more and more. Each losing infinitely small. I mean each slip towards the disintegration; but to me these slips were monumental. I developed. I passed in a few short moments into another stage.

My second stage. I wonder as I write this whether you will read it and whether if you do you will be able to understand what I want to convey to you. Sometimes as I read what I write I think I may have missed the point.

In my second stage, I awoke from a poor bedraggled, dispirited woman. I became mad. I lost all sense of proportion. I magnified things you had done to me into things without proper ratios. I even had the temerity to gloat while my Father died. This was a curious experience. I looked back upon it with wonder. I can’t understand exactly how it could have happened. I can’t exactly define my frame of mind. It must have arisen because I blamed him, even as much as I did you, for the condition in which I found myself.

Of course, my Mother was a negligible quantity in my life. And from the things I have learned concerning her since her death, her sorrow over the tragedies that surrounded her life were but passing affairs which did not seem in any way to approach her. She seemed to sense nothing except her material side. Everything was cast from her as a snake sheds its skin. From her I received life and from her I got nothing except life.

It was different in the case of my Father. He loved me, and I know now as I look back that he adored me. His one ambition in life was to make existence for me as free from all source of worry as the human can. But he failed, and he failed because his perspective was bad. He didn’t understand the longings of a real woman. He knew the world from a man’s point of view. There he stopped. He knew nothing of it from a love’s point of view. He loved, but he loved materially. I asked him once whether he loved Mother as much as when he married her. He could not answer. He knew his love had left her and centered about his own success, which meant money and position—the flattery of men.

I am hastening these two developments because I want to tell you of the third stage of my life—the third development, and what it has cost me, how I arrived at this stage at which I find myself and what if anything I have gained by my conduct towards you.

There is a curious thing comes to my mind. It may not strike you exactly as it does me. But I am going to mention it for the reason that it interests me. You, Peter, even today, are the only thing in life as far as I am concerned, and it took the greatest amount of determination to withstand the temptation which assailed me.

Many times in the past twenty-odd years I have gotten out of my bed with the firm determination to come back to you. To say that probably after all I was wrong, that I laid too much stress upon the condition in which I found myself. You know, or probably you have not thought it out—that once a woman gives herself to a man, once she has borne him children, her whole heart, her whole life is wrapped up in the one experience. Women are not like men. They are monogamous. There is barely a woman in the world who has given herself to one man, and afterwards goes through a divorce court or leaves him, that at times she does not feel within herself an urge that is nearly unconquerable to go back to that man. Women re-marry and they live in what is supposed to be contentment, but in their hearts there is no contentment.

You will never know the tugs I have had or the strength I have used to carry out this thing to its bitter end, but I was certain to do this.

Eight years after I had gone from the house, I stood for hours outside the wall. I looked through the bars of the gate. I looked upon the garden. There was a light in the room in which you had placed the divan—the dear old divan, with the soft light burning behind it. I stood for hours on a clear night. The moon shone through the trees, and I could see the flowers. I could even make out the fountain around which we had walked and you had told me of what you had done during the day. This only happened once—a walk such as this. What joy that walk gave me. I feel it even now. The great door was open. The light beckoned to me. It invited me to come. It seemed to say, “Enter, and you will be forgiven. Love waits for you.” I shook with fear. For I was afraid that I might weaken.

I walked furiously up and down the pavement. My eyes were pinned upon that light, and except for the light that fled through the front doors everything else was dark. Nowhere was there a single light except in that one room. I thought I could see you in it. I wondered whether you were happy. I didn’t believe you were. Somehow I saw you much changed. You were gray. Your shoulders were not full. You seemed to me to be stooped. I wondered if I went in how you would greet me. I was afraid.

It was late when I left. Midnight. The light still burned. It struck me as curious. I wondered why this was so. After I went away, I knew I had made a mistake. I should have gone in to you. I should have walked up to that little room and sat myself down upon the divan, and if you were not there I should have waited. I believe now and I believed then that you would have taken me in your arms and comforted me. You would not have berated me. You didn’t know how lonely I had been. But, Peter, I failed you. You told me so.

I left as I say, at midnight. I walked past my father’s house. Some one was laughing in there. New people. People who had children. Life. The lights were all lit. It looked so gay. I believe I wept. A man came out upon the porch. I could see him from the lodge gates. He put out his hand as if to see if it rained. He did not see the moon. I thought that so funny. He went back again, closed the door and after sometime the lights began to go down one by one, and finally the house became dark. It was so peaceful. And I was so unhappy. So lacking in peace.

I thought of all that I had done in that old house. I saw my early life again. I felt its happiness creep over me. I felt my father at my side. I saw him stand by me. I could almost feel the grasp of his hand. His breath fanned my cheek. And it seemed to me he whispered in my ear. He said with such depth in his voice, “I forgive you Clarinda. I pity you. Go back.” The thing became so vivid to me, that I turned and ran. I don’t know how far I ran; but I ran until a man stopped me. He said, “Why do you run? Are you scared? Has anything happened to you?”

I fled from him. I ran further until I was nearly dropping with exhaustion, then I stopped. I was far from your house. Far down in the city. It was terrible to me. Then I walked rapidly. It was getting late. A bell in a tower near by struck two.

I have never been back since. That happened years ago. But even although it happened years ago, it is as fresh in my mind as if it took place yesterday. I conquered myself. I didn’t go back to you. My second development had taken place. My second stage had been gone through with. I was different. I was no more the Clarinda you married. My old self had died. You would not have loved me any more. It would have been impossible.

It is night, Peter. Good-night.

Dear Peter:

I am continuing the letter I wrote you sometime ago. Of course, I am sending you these as a compilation. They are not in series; for if I should do that you would lose the trend. Probably you would become bored and when these letters came from time to time, you might throw them in the waste basket. It is impossible for me to judge your frame of mind from this distance after all these years. I cannot judge into what you have developed.

However, the first part is finished and the second part is also done with. This is the third part. The drawing of the thing to a conclusion—a finishing of it all. And after this is done, I shall sit down by my window and look out upon the passing world and wonder how long I shall live. How soon I shall have peace—a thing I have never had, or ever known.

I remember the day I left. It was cruel. You recollect the sky. The sun did not shine. The flowers in the garden as I went seemed to tuck their heads down under their leaves as if seeking protection from the cold. It was not cold. It was raining. It was warm.

I entered the car. I closed the door by myself. It appeared to me as if some one was closing me in some place, just as if I were being penned in a great prison, from which I should never come out. I shivered, Peter.

The last face I saw was that of Tizzia who stood at one of the windows. The tears were running down her face. Frantically she waved her hand to me, and then she was gone. It was all gone—the house, you and my happiness.

I wonder if Tizzia told you of my last conversation with her—the threats I made of the things I should do. I often think of that conversation and the stress I was under at the time. Funny as it may appear to you I did those things. I went forth from you—from all the things I thought were right and good.

You should have seen the man. I met him a short time after I left. His name was Bill—Slippery Bill, he was called. A vicious man. A drunkard of the most horrible kind. His mind was a morass of immorality. His sense of humor was beating a woman. He had killed one person, and when he was drunk he bragged to me and described how his victim had moaned and begged. He loved to tell me of the thing he killed. Of course, it was a woman. He was just a man—a coward.

Bill was a thief—a second-story man. One who lies in wait until a house is empty and then goes in safely. When he would steal he would come to me in the hovel we lived in and throw the things he had got on the table, and gloat on them, and brag about the ease with which he did this sort of thing. After that he would get drunk. For days and weeks he was in this condition. He amused me. He was so futile. His operations so foolish. With half the effort he could have made a good living.

Bill hated work. He wanted to live in what he called ease. Poor foolish Bill! He feared everything. The crack of a twig, the sound of the wind, a strange footstep. It was always the law coming for him. The police! He even feared me and sometimes in his frenzy of fear he would beat me. He thought I might betray him. It amused me. His fear was queer. I laughed at it when he was gone on one of his missions.

I met this creature not long after I had gone from you. I went down into the depths of shame and poverty. I lived in one tiny room. Around me was a host of queer furtive people who lived from day to day—seeking always something that might keep them until the morrow. It was sad, but it was interesting. I went to their haunts. I soon became known to them. I even acquired their furtive habits. I appeared to be seeking like they, the things that would keep me until the next day. Sometimes even in their extreme poverty they laughed. I would pretend that I had a good night. That I had seen some man who gave me part of what he had and I would give to them. A dollar now and then. Once I gave a poor old man, who had lived in his horrors for years, a five-dollar bill. You should have seen him. He became my shadow. There was no thankfulness in his manner. He thought he could get more. I found him in my room, going through my things. He found nothing. I took care of that. I cursed him for his temerity. He shrank out of the place, but he came back, for he hoped.

I came across Bill only four weeks after I left you. It was a short time after I took the miserable room in this quarter of this city. What city doesn’t make any difference. But it was not so far from you that I couldn’t watch you and what you did.

You should have seen the dive—dirt, ill-smelling, horrible. A ragged crew came and went. I entered, and I was poorly dressed—that is I had on the kind of finery of the people of the class I tried to identify myself with. I looked the part. I sat at one of the broken-down tables—filthy with stale beer and smeared with old pieces of cheese. Oh, how it smelt!

Bill was standing at the bar. He was partially drunk. He turned, as I sat down, and he saw me. A curious light went over his face, and I knew here was the man! The man who should teach me whether men loved women from their pound value or from love.

Drunkenly he walked over to the table and leaned his great bony knuckles upon it. He didn’t take off his hat. He looked at me. Even though I was dressed so badly, I was beautiful.

He spoke to me, I nodded my head. He ordered a glass of beer for me. He drank a concoction which he called whiskey. He was terribly dirty. Then he sat down. I looked at him. Rarely have I seen such a repulsive creature as he was. A great head covered with long shaggy hair, that curled in a mass. His eyes were blue—a deep blue. In them one could see the depths of depravity he had sunk to. His mouth was weak and sloppy, but his chin, covered with a few days’ beard, was strong. He looked brutal. And, Peter, he was brutal.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

“Nowhere,” I replied. I drank a little of the beer. He swallowed the drink he had before him at a gulp. He appeared to throw it down his throat. I noticed that none of the muscles either contracted or expanded with the effort.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“No one,” I replied.

“Where do you live?” he persisted.

I turned from him and arose from the table and left him staring after me. I knew he would follow. He did. We went out of the place together.

“My wife is dead,” he said.

“Well?” I answered.

“I want another.”

We stood outside of the door upon the pavement. In the light that came through the dirty windows. I moved away from him.

That was the beginning of the life I led with him. It was a curious sort of thing. He began to love me. He sought me out everywhere I went. There were many others. But Bill interested me more than any other man I met.

You should have heard him the night we walked together down one of the poorest streets in the city. He turned every few moments and looked back. He always walked near the walls of the buildings, for he told me that he was afraid. He knew he was suspected for all kinds of crimes.

He called me Magdalen. Bill had a slice of poetry in his make-up, and he reasoned well. He told me he loved me. He would even go straight for me. He would never drink again. He got drunk that night. I wouldn’t go with him. Bill was a liar like most men.

A long time went by. We met every night—in all kinds of places. All of them as dirty as the first. It ended by my going with him.

It happened one night we walked to the park. It was late. All the grog shops had closed. It was long after one o’clock. We sat upon a bench together. Bill was sober. He had washed. It was dreadfully dark. It was curious the feeling of disgust I had for the man; yet for some unaccountable reason I was attracted to him. I listened to him as he spoke. I compared his protestations with yours. His were stronger. Bill was only the offspring of the gutter. After a while as he went on he thrilled me. When he unbended his crooked figure and shook the mass of hair on his head, I wondered at the man. Women, Peter, are curious—even more curious than men. Underneath they love the cave man. They like strength and brutality. In this part of my life when I see with what insane cruelty this class of people beat and bruise their women, I wonder at them. But they do not leave—they weep, but they stay.

You should have heard him as he stood before me and looked at me the best he could in the dark. I could see his eyes flash.

I remember each word he spoke, as if it were yesterday. Yet Bill has been dead years and years, and he died in jail.

“You are different, Magdalen. I don’t understand you. I don’t care about that. I only know you came into my life. You are here. The first night I saw you, although I was drunk, I knew you were my woman. I don’t care where you came from, nor who you are. I love you, Magdalen. I would do anything for you. How long it has been since you came into this part of the world, makes no difference to me. I don’t know if you have ever loved before. I suppose you have. All women love at sometime. You don’t know what real love means. I love you—I want you. I am going to have you. It is funny, I never spoke to any women as I do to you. You seem to make me different. I’ve lost my strength; it has died in me. If you were like the rest I should take you. I would not ask. I would make you do as I want. But I cannot. That is the thing I don’t understand. I am afraid of you. Why?”

I whispered, “Yes, Bill.”

Women are curious. It seems as if they are forced to listen to men when they begin to lay before them what they term their hearts. Mostly it is the animal in them. They wish to propagate.

He went on as if I had not interrupted him. “Magdalen, I wonder if you know that the love of a man such as I am, is different from other kinds. We never select from personal advantage. It is more the man. The spirit of a beast. We want. We want physically. I have thought of you a great deal. And I can’t understand what it is in you that makes me look at you differently from the women I have been thrown with, but the difference is there. I don’t believe that you belong to the people you pretend you do. There is something behind. You eat differently. Your fingers are different. Your skin is different. You are beautiful. The people with whom I have always gone are only beautiful in their youth. They have the bloom and that is all. It soon dies. It may be the conditions surrounding them that causes this sort of thing. Tell me where you came from? Why are you here?”

“I won’t tell you that. I am here. That is enough. Misfortune has placed me here. I like it. I am going to stay.”

“Then you love me. Is that the reason you stay?” He shook with emotion and walked up and down in the dark in front of me.

I was terribly attracted. He was a brute, but he was a man after all. He had been unfortunate. And yet I don’t think that exactly covers what I mean. I never asked him from where he had come, or by what fatality he had sunk so low. Bill was the dregs.

“May I kiss you?” he asked.

Peter, I could not—I could not! And yet I knew in the end it would happen. I knew as I looked at this creature that to him I would be in name a wife. I trembled with fear. I hated it dreadfully. Every fiber in my body recoiled from any sort of personal contact with him. I wondered whether I would bear him children. I wondered whether he would beat me tomorrow or the day after. I knew he would. He did. Not then, but soon. It was queer, Peter, that after it happened—I mean after I took up life with him. Although he beat me, he did not kill the thing in me that you did. He always wept, when he got sober, and his contrition was wonderful. Unfortunately this did not deter him from beating me later. I think underneath that even though I thought about it all the time I loved him. How do you suppose that came about? I don’t know. Some people say a woman loves but once. Yet, here I was loving two distinct persons. And those persons so diametrically opposed.

It did happen. He kissed me. It was in the park in exactly the same place he had asked me before. He did not ask me. He took me in his arms. I struggled. I fought. I knew it was the end. I anticipated it was coming. I didn’t go with him into the park for weeks and weeks; yet he asked me to go innumerable times. At last I consented. I saw the end. It was written with fiery fingers on the wall. You know just like the words in the Bible. Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin! I don’t suppose my words I saw meant the same thing. I don’t know what the Bible words mean; but I knew the words I saw. They were burnt into my brain.

Bill kissed me. He kissed me again and again. The animal came up in him. It was fearful and yet it was to me a wonderful experience. Eventually, I, being a woman, lay quietly in his arms. I could smell his dirty body—the sweat of years was upon it. His clothes were unkempt. His shirt was open at the neck and he looked precisely what he was—a thug.

I was close to my revenge. And yet, I was not getting precisely what I started out to get. I had failed again, Peter. I failed. I loved this thing—this thug. Why do you suppose that happened? I awoke to him. It must have been that unconquerable force—Nature. You know I hate dirt. I have always hated dirt. I mean immorality. And yet here I was an honest woman, a woman of instinct, doing this thing.

Bill kissed me as I say. Then he breathed a sigh. It came from his soul. If he had a soul, which I doubt. “Come, get up. It is late. We will go home.”

I got up from the seat. He controlled me. I could not refuse. I wanted to. I wanted to run. I thought death was better than this thing I was going into with my eyes open. I knew Bill. He took my hand in his. We walked silently through the park. I went easily. There was no drawback on my part.

Down into the streets, from one evil-smelling way to another, through an alley, fetid with decayed dirt that lay in masses, then into another long row of old houses. This was called a street. It was silent. There was no sign of life anywhere. A rat ran across the gutter in front of us occasionally. I held to him with fear. Bill plodded on. He knew where he was. I was in a mist. My mind wouldn’t work. If it had, I should have screamed.

How far I went I don’t know. We stopped. Bill dragged me into a place. It was dark. I stumbled up one stairway, then up another. It must have been the top of the house, before Bill kicked a door open. He lit a light. I don’t know what kind of light it was; but it struggled to dispel the gloom.

I can’t tell you of this room. I’ve lived in it a long time. I’ve suffered in it. But I have been loved for myself. I did not fail there. I have known real love. It has paid me from that standpoint. When I die I will have known something most women miss. I had no children. In this I was fortunate.

My story is nearly finished, Peter. Bill, as I said, went to the penitentiary. I think it was my fault. I wished for something. He couldn’t get it. We had nothing. He went to get it for me and got caught. Bill never failed me.

I left the country after Bill died. I am living in Paris. I am getting old. I am tired. But I don’t regret. I have had my revenge.

I sit all day in the sun. I am always in my garden. I never go out. I have no reason to go. The outside does not attract me.

Goodbye, Peter. It is finished. And I would not have had it otherwise.

Dear Peter:

I had decided not to write you anymore concerning myself or of what has happened to me in these intervening years. But woman-like I felt that there was more you should know, and I did not precisely feel as if I had had the last word. You must forbear with me and be patient.

As I told you in my last letter, Bill went to the penitentiary. I went with him on the train. The sheriff thought I was his wife. He commiserated with me and allowed me to sit next to Bill all the way. Bill was pitiful. I felt for him, for it was so unnecessary for him to be in the position he was in. I would have given Bill a living but I was afraid. He would not have believed me. He would have thought that I had some other man. Bill would have killed me and then you would have been free. I never intended that. I would not have had that happen.

You should have sat back of us and heard Bill swear what he would do after he got out. Twenty years! Can you imagine anybody laying plans for something to happen in twenty years? Bill did not get out. Poor animal, he died in the place. I buried him. And curiously enough I wept for him when he was placed in the ground. I buried with him my one great love. But I had learned what love meant. I don’t mean love surrounded with riches, but love that animates the breast of just a man. It is different.

When he was buried and a small stone placed at his head, I left the country. I came to Paris and I have lived here ever since. I should like to have you see the place. It is beautiful. I have a great house. And in it I have one room with a divan and a light back of it. I have in front of the divan a fireplace. It is kept lit all the time, even in the warmest weather. I look into it a great deal. I build even now hopes and castles that will never be realities.

I see in its blue flame, when the light is out and a quiet has settled upon the streets and only an occasional wayfarer goes by, a castle, and in its walls I place you, Peter—and the boy. I see my life as it might have been. I should not have known Bill. I should have had a different kind of love, not of the same value, but still I imagine it might have sufficed; it might have held me to my own. It would have done for I would not have known Bill—Bill the cave man.

Have you, I wonder, ever thought of this? Have you ever considered how dreadfully wasted your life has been and how lonely?

I have a garden back of this house. French windows open out upon it. Down in its depths, where I love to go, I have had placed trees like those I loved at home, greenswards of grass lead to paths and their borders are lined with flowers, almost the same kinds of flowers I had at home. A fountain plays and casts its waters into the air. I have a lodge keeper who bows when I enter the gates. He has a sinister smile. He, too, seems unhappy, but wise beyond comprehension, Peter.

Underneath, Peter, I want something I haven’t got. I don’t know what that is. I try to argue the thing out. I go carefully over every incident that has comprised my life. I try to blame myself. Sometimes I can and then at other times I cannot. It is curious the condition I am in.

I am not old, yet I feel old. I am only forty-odd years of age, and nowadays that is not age. I have no friends. I know no one. I must be lonely. I don’t know.

I think a great deal of you. I think of your wasted life. I don’t mean from the money standpoint. Which is the least thing in the world. For I experienced greater happiness living in a hovel, in dirt and in squalor, than I did with a butler and the other servants. But your life, Peter, is over. You are sixty and more. Time is ready to take you back into itself and close its account with you. Soon you will be dead. And out of it all you have got nothing. I’ve followed your career with interest and amusement. I knew its futility. I knew what in your heart you wanted. You wanted me. And your cupidity and your philosophy had lost for you the greatest thing in your life—love.

Do you know, Peter, that after all these years of separation I feel that you ought to come to me? That in all this world you have no one to take care of you. I told you in one of my letters to you that no matter what comes into a woman’s life, in her heart she lives alone with the man she gave herself to first. I am no different. I am only a woman, with all the frailties of a woman.

I don’t believe that there is any quality in a woman which is stronger than the quality of pity. I pity you. You are such a sad waste—such a pitiable thing. At times, Peter, I loved you with all the fervor of a young mind. That is something. Bill was only a sporadic incident in my life. As a fact he only seared it—burnt it with horrors that it would have been better that I should not have known. Had I not had the frailties of a woman I would not have gone with Bill; nature and its demands are too strong. Nature made me go with Bill. It was not of any volition of my own. If it had been I would not have gone.

Tizzia is with me. I’ve had her for the past few years. I hunted her up after I buried Bill. She is here beside me. She is looking over my shoulder as I write to you. She and I have become more than maid and mistress. I hold to her with eager hand. It is by her that I link myself with the past, with you and with the boy. I am weak. I wobble. I am not as I used to be. My strength is gone. The fight in me is over. I have suffered, Peter—suffered terribly.

I often wonder at the weakness of the human. We start with such assurance and we end so pitiably. I had strength. I had determination. I did the thing that now I know I should not have done and out of it I have gotten that thing revenge. It is only too true the words in the Bible—“Vengeance is mine saith the Lord.” I have lost. I wonder what the proper course in life is, for what we do is always wrong. I tried and I failed.

Tizzia and I talked over this thing this morning and I write it hastily for fear I may again change and the old feeling might arouse itself in me and I would not put down here truly what I feel. There is only one thing left in me that is like my old self and that is my absolute strength for the truth. That I think is my one saving grace.

Tizzia said slowly and with what I thought was wonderful clearness. “Now, Madame, I would write this. I would give Mr. Thorbald the chance. You would have done your duty. It is better. Why carry out a bad situation when it can be bettered?”

“But,” I answered, “he will think me foolish, and weak. After all my bragging as to what I was going to do.”

“We are all weak, Madame,” she replied. “We are only human.”

“What would you say, Tizzia?” I asked.

“This,” she replied shortly.

“The door is open. I wait for you to come. I will be to you as I was before. We can forget the past. It is over. All that we did is done. I am sorry. That covers with me a multitude. We have both lost. We should try in these few years left us to regain what we have lost.”

“Is that all?” I asked.

“I think so. It is direct,” she answered me.

“I can’t do that, Tizzia—I can’t. I would feel that I had put all my entity into the balance and found it wanting.”

“That has been your failure. Madame, you’ve weighed and you have lost in the weighing too much already. You have lost your life.”

“Suppose he should refuse?” I asked.

“It can’t be helped. Then you must continue to suffer. It may be that he will. It depends on what his viewpoint may be. He may be too comfortable as he is. He may have put you out of his life. You may not occur to him at all.”

“Shall I try?” I asked doubtfully.

“Yes, Madame. And you will,” she replied.

And, Peter, I am sending you this. I will wait until you reply. The door, as Tizzia says, is open. I am not hard to find. I shall wait. And while I wait, I shall be abased; for I can not know what you will answer. But I shall hope.

I wonder, shall I fail in this as in everything else?

Good-night, Peter. Remember, I hope.

Weeks went into months. A winter came and then spring. The birds went and then came back. Clarinda and Tizzia lived and waited. But no word came from Peter. They could not tell whether the letters Clarinda had written had reached him or not. Tizzia gave up. She thought that the separation had been too long. That Clarinda had gone out of Peter’s mind—that if he remembered her at all it was only as one remembers a dream, indistinctly, without placement. She had died and been buried. Clarinda still hoped. She could not define why this condition remained with her. Hope kept her alive. Tizzia did not tell her that in her own belief the thing was done. Peter would not answer.

In June, on the same date that Clarinda had been married so many years before, on almost the same sort of day, the sun was bright. The warmth of the weather filled all the passersby with pleasure. The boulevards were lined with people. The little iron chairs that sat close to the iron tables were crowded. Gaiety and life permeated everything. In the distance here and there bands blared forth music. Clarinda sat in her garden under the shade of a pink umbrella. There was not much change in her beauty. It was still there. Her eyes were as bright and shone with the same lustre. Behind them could be seen a queer knowledge. It shone forth in bitterness. The attitude of her body was different. Her figure was almost as slim.

Her eyes were gradually closed to the light. A soft haze came between her and the day. She was soothed by the sound of the fountain that played beyond her. A bird sang in a tree. Tizzia sat close to her upon a stool at her feet. Peace, ineffable in its entirety closed about them. Clarinda slept. Tizzia watched her, not a sound disturbed the quiet. A gate clashed on its hinges. A window opened from the porch of the house. It swung to again and made almost as much clatter as the gate, then slowly and evenly two men walked down from the porch and came on through the garden. They came as if they knew every step of the way. There was no hesitancy in their advance. Tizzia did not hear them. She did not move. Clarinda sighed in her sleep. A smile crept over her face. She made a slight movement of her body as if settling herself in some deep remembrance. The smile on her face widened, and her lips spread apart showing her teeth. A great beauty settled down upon her. Tizzia looked up at her, and shook her head slowly. A new hope came into her heart. She thought that he might come. How wonderful. A probability of joy that would come filled Tizzia with anxiety. She feared it would not happen, it had been so long.

Tizzia sat and looked at her. Then suddenly she heard the steps of the men, and she sprang from the stool and raised herself. She looked up the path. Her face became pale. She shook with emotion.

“At last!” she exclaimed. Tizzia advanced towards them.

“Yes, we are here. It has been long. But we are here,” said the older man.

“She is asleep. Shall I go to her?”

“No!” answered the older of the two men. “I will go to her.”

The younger man stopped. He looked towards Clarinda. His face was drawn. A great anxiety seemed to bear down upon him. He seemed uncertain as he stood beside Tizzia.

The older man, bent by the weight of his years, strode painfully over to Clarinda. He stood in front of her. Steadily he looked down upon her. Her lips were still parted in a smile. A faint color was spread over her cheeks. To Peter they looked still smooth. He could only see an indefinite change that all the years had planted upon her; he saw her as she was the day she left him. He still remembered the cruelty of her words. They had burnt themselves into his soul, and they came back to him with even as great poignancy as if he had just listened to them.

Clarinda moved. Her hand stretched out in front of her as if she were reaching for something. It fell to her side. The smile went from her face. Peter did not move. Slowly with effort she opened her eyes. The light dazzled her as she looked at the man standing in front of her. At first she did not comprehend, then gradually it broke in upon her. She saw Peter. Her breath came from her in gasps. She could not speak.

Peter said slowly, “I am here. I have brought the boy. I have come for you, Clarinda.”

Clarinda gasped. She could not move. She lay inert in her chair, and heard his words. But she could not comprehend them. To her they were only words. It seemed to her as if some ghost had stepped out of the garden and confronted her. Gradually as if she had been steeped in a tepid bath the drops of perspiration gathered on her face.

Peter did not move, or say anything, but seemed to be waiting. Slowly Clarinda found her voice, which was weak and uncertain. It came from her in a whisper as she stammered.

“At last it is you! How—wonderful! And the boy.” Clarinda fell back into her chair. A great pallor spread over her cheeks, and with an effort she shook the tide from her. She arose from her chair, and staggered slightly. Peter stretched out his hand as if to stay her. As his hand came toward her, she moved slightly back.

“No!—No!—Peter,” she said. “It is not for you to forgive. My greatest sin has not been against you but against the boy. It lies with him, so let him think.”

Peter turned from her, and motioned to the younger man who was talking in a low tone to Tizzia. He beckoned to him and the young man advanced. He came until he stood quite close to his father.

Peter said quietly, “This is your mother.”

“You never told me, Father, where we were coming. I am unprepared. I don’t understand, I am so shocked. How beautiful she is. This is the first time in all my life I have ever heard you speak of her.”

“Yes,” answered Clarinda, “I am your mother.” She turned to Peter. “Peter,” she said, “you are bigger than I am, and after all you are a man. I have failed again.”

“What is done, is done,” he replied. “There are only a few years in front of me. I am well over sixty. You and I and the boy will go back. We will try.”

The boy knelt at his mother’s feet, and touched the hem of her dress, then he turned his eyes up to her.

“I’ve wanted a mother so much. I’ve dreamed of a mother, and at last I’ve found you.”

Clarinda wept. The tears went down her face, and she did not try to stem the torrent.

“We shall be happy,” the boy went on. “Never again shall we be separated. I am so happy! You are so beautiful—so wonderful!”

Clarinda stretched down her hand to him. He arose from the ground, and she took him in her arms. He kissed her. It was her boy. The fruit of her body.

Peter smiled.

The End