Four days have passed.  Georgiana has cast me off.  Her curtains are closed except when she is not there.  I have tried to see her; she excuses herself.  I have written; my letters come back unread.  I have lain in wait for her on the streets; she will not talk with me.  The tie between us has been severed.  With her it could never have been affection.

And for what?  I ask myself over and over and over—­for what?  Was she jealous of the bird, and did she require that I should put it out of the way?  Sometimes women do that.  Did she take that means of forcing me to a test?  Women do that.  Did she wish to show her power over me, demanding the one thing she knew would be the hardest for me to grant?  Women do that.  Did she crave the pleasure of seeing me do wrong to humor her caprice?  Women do that.  But not one these things can I even associate with the thought of Georgiana.  I have in every way to have her explain, to explain myself.  She will neither give nor receive an explanation.

I had supposed that her unnatural request would have been the end of my love, but it has not; that her treatment since would have fatally stung my pride, but it has not.  I understand neither; forgive both; love her now with that added pain which comes from a man’s discovering that the woman dearest to him must be pardoned—­pardoned as long as he shall live.

Never since have I been able to look at the red-bird with the old gladness.  He is the reminder of my loss.  Reminder?  Do I ever forget?  Am I not thinking of that before his notes lash my memory at dawn?  All day can they do more than furrow deeper the channel of unforgetfulness?  Little does he dream what my friendship for him has cost me.  But this solace I have at heart—­that I was not even tempted to betray him.

Three days more have passed.  No sign yet that Georgiana will relent soon or ever.  Each day the strain becomes harder to bear.  My mind has dwelt upon my last meeting with her, until the truth about it weavers upon my memory like vague, uncertain shadows.  She doubted my love for her.  What proof was it she demanded?  I must stop looking at the red-bird, lying here and there under the trees, and listening to him as he sings above me.  My eyes devour him whenever he crosses my path with an uncomprehended fascination that is pain.  How gentle he has become, and how, without intending it, I have deepened the perils of his life by the very gentleness that I have brought upon him.  Twice already the fate of his species has struck at him, but I have pledged myself to be his friend.  This is his happiest season; a few days now, and he will hear the call of his young in the nest.

I shut myself in my workshop in the yard this morning.  I did not wish my servants to know.  In there I made a bird-trap such as I had often used when a boy.  And late this afternoon I went to town and bought a bird-cage.  I was afraid the merchant would misjudge me, and explained.  He scanned my face silently.  To-morrow I will snare the red-bird down behind the pines long enough to impress on his memory a life-long suspicion of every such artifice, and then I will set him free again in his wide world of light.  Above all things, I must see to it that he does not wound himself or have the least feather broken.