Chapter 2 - Page 2

Aunt
Judith instead of going with him to Birmingham to that horrid
Trade Congress. We parted on the best of terms. He couldn't have
been more affectionate. I will kill myself; I don't care about
anything or anybody. And when I came back on Wednesday he was
gone, and there was this letter." She produced a letter, and wept
more bitterly than before.

"Let me see it."

Henrietta hesitated, but her mother took the letter from her, sat
down near the window, and composed herself to read without the
least regard to her daughter's vehement distress. The letter ran
thus:

"Monday night.

"My Dearest: I am off--surfeited with endearment--to live my own
life and do my own work. I could only have prepared you for this
by coldness or neglect, which are wholly impossible to me when
the spell of your presence is upon me. I find that I must fly if
I am to save myself.

"I am afraid that I cannot give you satisfactory and intelligible
reasons for this step. You are a beautiful and luxurious
creature: life is to you full and complete only when it is a
carnival of love. My case is just the reverse. Before three soft
speeches have escaped me I rebuke myself for folly and
insincerity. Before a caress has had time to cool, a strenuous
revulsion seizes me: I long to return to my old lonely ascetic
hermit life; to my dry books; my Socialist propagandism; my
voyage of discovery through the wilderness of thought. I married
in an insane fit of belief that I had a share of the natural
affection which carries other men through lifetimes of matrimony.
Already I am undeceived. You are to me the loveliest woman in the
world. Well, for five weeks I have walked and tallied and dallied
with the loveliest woman in the world, and the upshot is that I
am flying from her, and am for a hermit's cave until I die. Love
cannot keep possession of me: all my strongest powers rise up
against it and will not endure it. Forgive me for writing
nonsense that you won't understand, and do not think too hardly
of me. I have been as good to you as my selfish nature allowed.
Do not seek to disturb me in the obscurity which I desire and
deserve. My solicitor will call on your father to arrange
business matters, and you shall be as happy as wealth and liberty
can make you. We shall meet again--some day.

"Adieu, my last love,

"Sidney Trefusis."

"Well?" cried Mrs. Trefusis, observing through her tears that her
mother had read the letter and was contemplating it in a daze.

"Well, certainly!" said Mrs. Jansenius, with emphasis. "Do you
think he is quite sane, Henrietta? Or have you been plaguing him
for too much attention? Men are not willing to give up their
whole existence to their