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“So, when August of this year came round, I found myself once more standing here.

“Ten years had passed since we stood here with her between us–ten years that had laid their richest gifts on her beauty. This time she was indeed alone. As I looked into her face, I somehow thought of Agamemnon’s fair daughter doomed to die a virgin. You can see my ‘Iphigenia’ in the spring, if you chance to be in Paris.

“This time, self-knowledge deserted me. The past was forgotten. The future was undreaded. The passion in my heart spoke without reserve or caution! I no longer said: ‘You need me! You love me!’ I cried out: ‘I can no longer live without you!’ I no longer said, ‘Come to me!’ I pleaded, ‘Take me to your heart. There, where my image is, let me rest at last. I have waited long, be kind to me.’

“I saw her sway toward me as once before she had done. It was too late to look backward or forward. I had conquered. In my weakness I believed it was thus ordained–that I deserved some credit for waiting so long.

“Yet, when she left me here alone, having promised, with downcast eyes that avoided mine, to place her hand in mine, and walk boldly beside me down the forbidden path of the world, I fell down on the spot her feet had pressed, and wept bitterly, as I had never done before in all my life. Wept over the shattered ideal, the faith I had so wilfully torn down, the miserable victory of my meanest self.

“I thought the end was come. Fate was merciful to me, however!

“I had myself fixed the following Thursday as the day for our departure. As I dated a letter to her that night my mind involuntarily reckoned the days, and I was startled to find that Thursday fell on that fatal tenth of August.

“I had not thought I could be so tortured in my mind as I was by the dread that she should notice the dire coincidence.

“She did!

“The hour that should have brought her to me, brought a note instead. It was dated boldly ‘August tenth.’ It was without beginning or signature. It said–I can repeat every word–‘Of the two roads to self-destruction open to me, I have chosen the one that will, in the end, give the least pain to you. I love you. I have always loved you since I was a child. I do not regret anything yet! Thank God for me that I depart without ever having seen a look of weariness in the eyes that gazed so lovingly into mine when we parted, and thank Him for yourself that you will never see a look of reproach in mine. I know no time so fitting to say a long farewell for both of us as this–Farewell, then.’

“I knew what I should find when I went up the hill.

“The doctors said ‘heart disease.’ She had been troubled with some such weakness. I alone knew the truth! As I had known myself, she had known me!

“You think you suffer–you, who might, but for me, have made her happy, as such women should be, in a world of simple natural joys! My friend, loss without guilt is pain–but it is not without the balm of virtuous compensation. You have at least a right to grieve.

“But I! I am forced to know myself. To feel myself borne along in spite of myself; and to realize that she who should have worn a crown of happy womanhood, lies there a sacrifice, to be bewailed like Jepthah’s one fair daughter; and to sit here in full dread of the ebbing of even this great emotion, knowing too well that it will pass out of my life when it shall have achieved its purpose, leaving only as evidence this –another great work, crystalized into immortality in everlasting stone. I know that I cannot long hold it here in my heart. The day will come–perhaps soon–when I shall stand outside that door, and recognize this as my work, and be proud of it, without the power to grieve, as I do now; when I shall approve my own handiwork, and be unable to mourn for her who was sacrificed to achieve it. What is your pain to mine?”