But long days passed and no letter came from his heart's love. Then he saw the announcement in a morning paper that she had gone away with her uncle to visit her Southern relatives.
"Cruel girl! she has gone without a word or sign. She hates me indeed, and will never forgive my boyhood's folly," he groaned, despairingly.
The first shock of pain and disappointment was so great that he could scarcely bear it. He thought vaguely of suicide, wondered which would be the easier way out of life—the dagger, the bullet, poison, or the river. Shakespeare's words came to him:
"Oh, that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! Oh, God! Oh, God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world."
He got up suddenly and shook himself with fierce self-scorn.
"God forgive me for these wild thoughts!" he cried. "No, I can not be such a coward! He is a coward who takes his own life because he can not bear its ills. I must remember that I have a dear little mother to live for, even though the hope of love and happiness be gone forever."
But life was cruel. He longed to get away somewhere—far away from the place where everything breathed of her, his cruel, beautiful love, and he decided that as soon as he secured his divorce he would go abroad and seek forgetfulness in constant travel.
Meanwhile, a sorrowful little note came to him from Alpine, praying him to forget her folly, or at least to keep it secret.
"I should die of shame if I believed any one knew but you," she wrote. "But you are so good and great, you can forgive me. Perhaps things like that have happened to you before. I should not wonder. Then do not exclude me from your friendship, I pray you. Forget that one mad moment, and think kindly of me as you did before.