"The stipulated time has come, and our hidden romance is atan end. Had I taken this resolution a year ago, it wouldhave saved me many vain hopes, and you, perhaps, a littleuncertainty. Forgive me, first, if you can, and then hearthe explanation!"You wished for a personal interview: you have had, not one, but many. We have met, in society, talked face toface, discussed the weather, the opera, toilettes, Queechy,Aurora Floyd, Long Branch, and Newport, and exchanged aweary amount of fashionable gossip; and you never guessedthat I was governed by any deeper interest! I have purposelyuttered ridiculous platitudes, and you were as smilinglycourteous as if you enjoyed them: I have let fall remarkswhose hollowness and selfishness could not have escaped you,and have waited in vain for a word of sharp, honest, manlyreproof. Your manner to me was unexceptionable, as it was toall other women: but there lies the source of mydisappointment, of—yes—of my sorrow!"You appreciate, I can not doubt, the qualities in womanwhich men value in one another—culture, independence ofthought, a high and earnest apprehension of life; but youknow not how to seek them. It is not true that a mature andunperverted woman is flattered by receiving only the generalobsequiousness which most men give to the whole sex. In theman who contradicts and strives with her, she discovers atruer interest, a nobler respect. The empty-headed, spindle-shanked youths who dance admirably, understand something ofbilliards, much less of horses, and still less ofnavigation, soon grow inexpressibly wearisome to us; but themen who adopt their social courtesy, never seeking toarouse, uplift, instruct us, are a bitter disappointment."What would have been the end, had you really found me?Certainly a sincere, satisfying friendship. No mysteriousmagnetic force has drawn you to me or held you near me, norhas my experiment inspired me with an interest which can notbe given up without a personal pang. I am grieved, for thesake of all men and all women. Yet, understand me! I mean noslightest reproach. I esteem and honor you for what youare. Farewell!"
There! Nothing could be kinder in tone, nothing more humiliating in substance, I was sore and offended for a few days; but I soon began to see, and ever more and more clearly, that she was wholly right. I was sure, also, that any further attempt to correspond with her would be vain. It all comes of taking society just as we find it, and supposing that conventional courtesy is the only safe ground on which men and women can meet.
The fact is—there's no use in hiding it from myself (and I see, by your face, that the letter cuts into your own conscience)—she is a free, courageous, independent character, and—I am not. But who was she?