The man starts, stands erect, his brows contracted, his lips set in a white line of determination. He deliberately folds the letter, returns it to its envelope, and slips it into an inner pocket. As he crushes it down out of sight a look of hate sweeps over his face and blazes in his eyes.
Then he turns and follows the woman into the house.
Picture number two was sketched more than two years later, and shows a small, meagerly furnished room, in an humble tenement, located in a narrow street of a great Western city. It has only one occupant—a young and attractive woman, who is sitting before a fire in an open grate, for it is a chill November night.
Her face is stained with weeping; her eyes are red and swollen; great heart-rending sobs burst from her every now and then, and she is trembling from head to foot.
As in the first picture, there is a letter. She holds it in her hands, upon her lap, and she has crumpled it with her fingers, which are twitching nervously, causing the paper to rattle in her grasp.
“Merciful Heaven! can it be true?” she breathes, between her quivering lips. “I cannot, will not believe a human being could be so heartless, so lost to all honor and manliness.”
She raises the missive, spreads it out before her, and reads it through again, although every word was already seared, as with a hot iron, upon her brain. It was brief, cold, and fiendishly cruel. It was addressed to no one, and was also without signature.
“I’m off,” it began. “There is no use in longer trying to conceal the fact that I am tired of the continual grind of the last two years. It was a great mistake that we ever married, and I may as well confess what you have already surmised—that I never really loved you. Why did I marry you, then? Well, you know that I never could endure to be balked in anything, and as I had made up my mind to cut a certain person out, I was bound to carry my point. You know whom I mean, and that he and I were always at cross-purposes. The best thing you can do will be to go back to your own people—tell whatever story you choose about me. I shall never take the trouble to refute it, neither will I ever annoy you in any way. Get a divorce if you want one. I will not oppose it; as I said before, I am tired of the infernal grind and bound to get out of it. I’ll go my way, and you may go yours; but don’t attempt to find or follow me, for I won’t be hampered by any responsibilities in the future.”
The woman fell into deep thought after this last perusal of the letter, and she sat more than an hour gazing into the fire, scarcely moving during that time.