“I was very happy—­oh, intensely happy for a while.  Then a tiny cloud of indifference, thin and shifting like morning mist, rose between us.  It darkened and lowered.  He was a hasty, masterful man, but he was never rough to me.  Gradually I came to see that time had changed me from a joy to a burden.  How was it I lived?  How was it I shut my eyes and hoped?  At last he told me he was obliged to go abroad, but that he could not take me with him; and then proposed to establish me in some such undertaking as my late employer’s.  When he said that, I knew all was over; that nothing I could do or say would avail; that I had been but a toy; that he could not conceive what my nature was, nor the agony of shame, the torture of rejected love, he was inflicting.  I contrived to keep silent and composed.  I knew I had no right to complain:  I had risked all and lost.  I managed to say we might arrange things later, and he praised me for being a sensible, capital girl.  I had seen this coming, or I don’t suppose I could have so controlled myself.  But I could not accept his terms.  I had a little money and some jewels; I thought I might take these.  So I wrote a few lines, saying that I needed nothing, that he should hear of me no more, and I went away out into the dark.  If I could only have died then!  I was too great a coward to put an end to my life.  Why do I try to speak of what cannot be put into words?  Despair is a grim thing, and all life had turned to dust and ashes for me.  I could not even love him, though I pined for the creature I had loved, who once understood me, but from whose heart and mind I had vanished when time dulled his first impression, and to whom I became even as other women were.  But as I could not die, I was obliged to work, and there was but one way.  I dreaded to be found starving and unable to give an account of myself, so I applied to one of those large general shops where they neither give nor expect references.  There I staid for some months, so silent, so steeled against everything, that no one cared to speak to me.  I dare not even think of that time.  I do not understand how I managed to do anything.  At last I grew dazed, made blunders, and was dismissed.  I wandered here.  I failed to find employment, and felt I could do no more.  Still death would not come, I think my mind was giving way when you came.  Now am I worth helping, now that you know all?”

“Yes.  I will do my best for you.  Suffering such as yours must be expiation enough,” cried Katherine, her eyes still wet.  “Put the past behind you, and hope for the better days which will come if you strive for them.  But, oh! tell me, did he never try to find you?”

“Yes.  I saw advertisements in the paper which were meant for me; but after a while they ceased, and no doubt I was forgotten.  I reaped what I had sown.  Few men, I imagine, can understand that there are hearts as true, as strong, as tenacious, among women such as I am as among the irreproachable, the really good.  I have no real right to complain; only it is so hard to live on without hope or—­” She stopped abruptly.