great a thing for me.  Why should I spoil or hamper it?  If you loved me, as you did once—­if you still thought everything worth while, then, if I had a spark of decency left, I might kill myself to free you, but I should never do—­what I may do now.  But, William, you’ll forget me soon.  You’ll pass great laws, and make great speeches, and the years when I tormented you—­and all my wretched ways—­will seem such a small, small thing.

“Geoffrey says he loves me.  And I think he does, though how long it will last, or may be worth, no one can tell.  As for me, I don’t know whether I love him.  I have no illusion about him.  But there are moments when he absolutely holds me—­when my will is like wax in his hands.  It is because, I think, of a certain grandness—­grandeur seems too strong—­in his character.  It was always there; because no one could write such poems as his without it.  But now it’s more marked, though I don’t know that it makes him a better man.  He thinks it does; but we all deceive ourselves.  At any rate, he is often superb, and I feel that I could die, if not for him, at least with him.  And he is not unlikely to die in some heroic way.  He went out as you know simply as correspondent and to distribute relief, but lately he has been fighting for these people—­of course he has!—­and when he goes back he is to be one of their regular leaders.  When he talks of it he is noble, transformed.  It reminds me of Byron—­his wicked life here—­and then his death at Missolonghi.  Geoffrey can do such base, cruel things—­and yet—­

“But I haven’t yet told you.  He asks me to go with him, back to the fighting-lines in upper Bosnia.  There seems to be a great deal that women can do.  I shall wear a nurse’s uniform, and probably nurse at a little hospital he founded—­high up in one of the mountain valleys.  I know this will almost make you laugh.  You will think of me, not knowing how to put on a button without Blanche—­and wanting to be waited on every moment.  But you’ll see; there’ll be nothing of that sort.  I wonder whether it’s hardship I’ve been thirsting for all my life—­even when I seemed such a selfish, luxurious little ape?

“At the same time, I think it will kill me—­and that would be the best end of all.  To have some great, heroic experience, and then—­’cease upon the midnight with no pain!...’

“Oh, if I thought you’d care very, very much, I should have pain—­horrible pain.  But I know you won’t.  Politics have taken my place.  Think of me sometimes, as I was when we were first married—­and of Harry—­my little, little fellow!

“—­Maman and I have had a ghastly scene.  She came to scold me for my behavior—­to say I was the talk of Venice. She! Of course I know what she means.  She thinks if I am divorced she will lose her allowance—­and she can’t bear the thought of that, though Markham Warington is quite rich.  My heart just boiled within me.  I told her it is the poison of her life that works in me, and that whatever I do, she has no right to reproach me.  Then she cried—­and I was like ice—­and at last she went.  Warington, good fellow, has written to me, and asked to see me.  But what is the use?