Part 3

For I had absolutely died in that decision to live free from my bond. I was dead to all past relations and connections. I was dead to the social world around me, as if I had never lived before. The consciousness of my identity was gone. Every eye rested strangely upon me. I was as a child new born. I would have put out my hands simply as a child, for I was in the living world, again, a stranger; new born, with a life in perfect maturity.

And so came the final question:—

Shall the right I have asserted to live apart from my husband be followed by cutting off every desire, by marring or concealing every beauty, by devoting the remainder of a life, already cursed by an involuntary indiscretion of youth, to asceticism, and so continue in another form the struggle against nature to the end?—or accept the creed of the man I love, and seek also my highest happiness in the gratification of that love, which every instinct of my being approves?

And my answer to this final question is before you and all the world.

As I said at first, dear, I have no misgivings about the sincerity of your affection for me, under any changes of life; and I feel just as sure that you will never doubt the constant, undying friendship of

Your

LITTLE MARY.

TO MRS. ——, LONDON.

Transcriber’s Notes

pg 15 Changed: moment makes all vears to: moment makes all years

pg 39 Changed: the dispair that was in me to: the despair that was in me