“My story is so commonplace. I can tell it you in a few sentences. I married when I was seventeen at my father’s command, to save him from ruin. My husband, like my father, was a city merchant. I did not love him, but then I did not know what love was. My girlhood was a miserable one. My father belonged to the sect of Calvinists. Our home was hideous, and we were poor. Any release from it was welcome. John Drage, the man whom I married, had one good quality. He was generous. He bought me pictures, and books—things which I always craved. When my father’s command came, it did not seem a hardship. I married him. He was not so much a bad man, perhaps, as a weak one. We lived together for four years. I had one child, a little boy. Then I made a horrible discovery. My husband, whom I knew to be a drunkard, was hideously, debasingly false to me. The bald facts are these. I myself saw him drunk and helped into his carriage by one of those women whose trade it is to prey upon such creatures. This was not an exceptional occurrence. It was a habit.
“There, I have told you. It would have hurt me less to have cut off my right hand. But there shall be no misunderstanding, nor any concealment between us. I left John Drage’s house that night. I took little Freddy with me; but when I refused to return, he stole the child away from me. Then I drew a sharp line at that point in my life. I had neither friend nor relation, but there was some money which had been left me soon after my marriage. I lived alone, and I began to write. That is my story. That is why I cannot marry you.
“Dear, I want you, now that you know my very ugly history, to consider this. Whilst I was married, I was faithful to my husband; since then I have been faithful to my self-respect. But I have told myself always that if ever the time came when I should love, I would give myself to that man without hesitation and without shame. And that time has come, dear. You know that I love you! Your coming has been the great awakening joy of my life. Nothing that has gone before, nothing that the future may hold, can ever trouble me if we are together—you and I. I have suffered more than most women. But you will help me to forget it.
“I sit here with my face to the morning, and I seem to see a new life stretching out before me. Is not love a beautiful thing! I am not ambitious any more. I do not want any other object in life than to make you happy, and to be made happy by you. I began this letter with a heavy heart and with trembling fingers. But now I am quite calm and quite happy. I know that you will come to me. You see I have great faith in your love. Thank God for it!
“Berenice.”
The letter fluttered from Matravers’ fingers on to the floor. For several minutes he stood quite still, with his hand pressed to his heart. Then he calmly seated himself in a little easy chair which stood by his side, with its back to the window. He had a curious sense of being suddenly removed from his own personality,—his own self. He was another man gazing for the last time upon a very familiar scene.
He sat there with his head resting upon the palm of his hand, looking with lingering eyes around his little room, even the simplest objects of which were in a sense typical of the life which he was abandoning. He knew that that life, if even its influence had not been wide, had been a studiously well-ordered and a seemly thing. A touch of that ultra æstheticism, which had given to all his writings a peculiar tone and individuality, had permeated also his ideas as to the simplest events of living. All that was commonplace and ugly and vicious had ever repelled him. He had lived not only a clean life, but a sweet one. His intense love for pure beauty, combined with a strong dash of epicureanism, had given a certain colour to its outward form as well as to its inward workings. Even the simplest objects by which he was surrounded were the best of their kind,—carefully and faithfully chosen. The smallest details of his daily life had always been governed by a love of comely and kindly order. Both in his conversation and in his writings he had studiously avoided all excess, all shadow of evil or unkindness. His opinions, well chosen and deliberate though they were, were flavoured with a delicate temperateness so distinctive of the man and of his habits. And now, it was all to come to an end! He was about to sever the cords, to cut himself adrift from all that had seemed precious, and dear, and beautiful to him. He, to whom even the women of the streets had been as sacred things, was about to become the established and the open lover of a woman whom he could never marry. To a certain extent it was like moral shipwreck to him. Yet he loved her! He was sure of that. He had called himself in the past, as indeed he had every right to, something of a philosopher; but he had never tried to harden within himself the human leaven which had kept him, in sympathy and kindliness, always in close touch with his fellows. And this was its fruit! To him of all men there had come this....
Soon he found himself in the street, on his way to her. Such a letter as this called for no delay. It was barely twelve o’clock when he rang the bell at her house. The girl who answered it handed him a note. He asked quickly for her mistress.
She left an hour ago by the early train, he was told. She has gone into the country.
She had made up her mind quite suddenly, and had not even taken her maid. The address would probably be in the letter.