“Nearly a year passed when the community was startled by the announcement that his wife had died suddenly and suspiciously, and he had been arrested as her murderer. As in all such cases, some considered the accusation preposterous, and others believed in it with vindictive energy, and clamored for his punishment. I was indignant at their gross cruelty and expressed my opinion freely—too freely, I was told. He was tried and acquitted, but his acquittal did not set him right in the eyes of many of his townspeople. They talked over the circumstances, magnifying all the suspicious indications and inventing new ones, and they treated him to cuts, contemptuous looks and other expressions of malevolence, until they almost broke him down. You know there are human beings who bitterly resent it when a sensation doesn’t develop into the last phase of the horrible, and of such that town was largely composed.
“A few days after his acquittal Doring came into our office and thanked me warmly for my kind expressions of faith in his innocence, of which it seems he had been told. He looked haggard and ill, and at sight of him I felt renewed indignation at the cruelty of man to man, and I said so as earnestly as I could.
“About that time I began to notice something queer in the faces of people when they talked about Doring to me. I could not read it clearly, but that it was inimical to me I soon discovered. It was something they pretended to conceal, yet really wanted to make conspicuously noticeable. It was a suspicion of a low order, but what? The man was nothing to me more than any other victim of injustice. What had I to do with him and his sorrowful affairs?
“I am intuitive and sensitive. As soon as I began to notice this unspoken suspicion, I began to look guilty. My face flamed red at the mention of his name or any allusion to the case. You can understand that, but minds of a lower grade could not. They construed it as a sign of guilt, yet it was but the knowledge of their offensive thoughts that embarrassed and unsettled me. To know that I was suspected made me look confused and guilty. It was always so even when I was a child at school. If a culprit were sought, I looked like one. You know, however, that most people are mere surface readers of others, and nothing in the world is so little understood as a delicate, sensitive, high spirit. I who was far removed in thought from that of which I was suspected, crimsoned with horror when I encountered this base suspicion in the faces of those who harbored it, and it made me self-conscious and shy when I spoke with Doring himself. In short, it ate into me and destroyed my peace.
“In a little while the air grew black with it. All pretence of concealment was abandoned, and significant looks blossomed into speech. They said Doring and I were infatuated with each other, and that he had killed his wife in order to be able to marry me, and that I had put him up to it. The vilest and falsest tales were circulated about us. The miserable local newspapers printed thinly-veiled insinuations, and fool friends came and poured abhorrent stories into my ears.
“The brutal malevolence of their lies amazed as well as horrified me. I could not see what I had done to bring such an avalanche of malice upon me. You may imagine what I suffered. Alone, and with a heart that had in it originally nothing but good will for everybody, this cruel experience almost withered me for life.
“I longed to leave the accursed place which now seemed peopled with devils. Driven almost to desperation, at last I went forth to find a spot untainted by the hatred that there had destroyed my peace. I came here to Gougal’s great engraving house, and with nothing in the way of help or influence from anybody, asked for employment and got it.—‘Ask and ye shall receive’ being a true law. Here I have been ever since, almost happy—at least not miserable.
“But this is not all my story. The difficult part is to come. A few days before I left Mr. Doring came into the office where I was at work and told me that he loved me. I was surprised and startled, and yet I listened gladly, and the story sounded sweet to me. It seemed to me that I had always loved him, though I don’t know why, for I am sure I had not thought of it before. We were both victims of unjust and malicious public opinion, so perhaps it was natural that we turned to each other for consolation, though I have often wondered since what it was that suddenly filled my mind with love for a man who, until that moment was no more to me than any other. Are the words ‘I love you’ so potent that they can create responsive love? In no sense is he my ideal, but the feeling that came into life when he spoke those words to me has dominated me from that hour, though I have never seen him since that day. I have wondered if he loved me before that scandal came upon him, and if, in some mysterious way, people found it out and constructed their tales according to their light on such situations? Or whether their stories put it into his head, and if so, through what occult channels was it communicated to me? I am almost persuaded that it was brought about somehow by the accusations of the community in which we lived. Somebody put out the suggestion, it reached his mind and there sprouted, took root and grew until it was strong enough to transplant a counterpart of itself to mine, for ideas are transmissible, you know. Ah! if we but knew the mystery of mind we should know all there is to know, perhaps.
“After I came away, Doring left too. He writes me constantly, and is now urging me strongly to marry him. I believe that I love him, and the knowledge that he loves me sustains me. Merely thinking about it keeps me from being lonely. ’Tis said that love is life; that even the love of a bird or a dog will keep a human being alive. You and others have wondered why I am apparently so contented and cheerful and want no lovers, only good comrades. It is because my heart is anchored.
“And yet I shrink from marrying Doring. It would mean the stirring up of all the now stagnant pools of scandals. I am content to go on as I am, for a time at least, finding my joy in the thoughts of being loved; but he is not willing. He says he has waited long enough—that the matter must be decided one way or the other very soon. When I think of giving him up, of putting it all out of my life and plodding on with nothing to sustain me, I feel that I can’t do it. Unhappily, I am one of those miserable beings who are loyal by nature and cannot help it if they would. An affection becomes a part of me, and can’t be put off without disaster to the whole structure.