And then came to me again the idea of suicide.
I did not shrink from this thought superstitiously, as fearing to rush unbidden into the presence of the offended deities. I had no such thought. It meant to me only rest from this great burden and weariness of life—to lie down and sleep while it was yet day—to sleep forever.
But I was too calm for the rashness of this act—too strong. If they, who retired to the cloister from a sense of a superstitious duty, willingly endured its burden, I, with larger intelligence, could not sink beneath their lower thought, and weakly die. No, I had committed no crime that I should die; nor were my past misfortunes a reason why I should voluntarily impose new ones upon my life to come. I knew I was in the world to live. Vigor of body, of mind, passions, desires, reason, all that goes to make up a human soul, were in the full tide of existence; and I was here surely not to contemplate death, but to fulfil the functions of life—of a new life.
For I had absolutely died in that decision to live free from my bond. I was dead to all past relations and connections. I was dead to the social world around me, as if I had never lived before. The consciousness of my identity was gone. Every eye rested strangely upon me. I was as a child new born. I would have put out my hands simply as a child, for I was in the living world, again, a stranger; new born, with a life in perfect maturity.
And so came the final question:—
Shall the right I have asserted to live apart from my husband be followed by cutting off every desire, by marring or concealing every beauty, by devoting the remainder of a life, already cursed by an involuntary indiscretion of youth, to asceticism, and so continue in another form the struggle against nature to the end?—or accept the creed of the man I love, and seek also my highest happiness in the gratification of that love, which every instinct of my being approves?
And my answer to this final question is before you and all the world.
As I said at first, dear, I have no misgivings about the sincerity of your affection for me, under any changes of life; and I feel just as sure that you will never doubt the constant, undying friendship of
Your
Little Mary.