. . The one bright spot is that it saves you and your
endowment from further catastrophes, and preserves you to the
pleasant paths of scientific fame. I no longer lie like a log
across your path, which is now as open as on the day before you saw
me, and ere I encouraged you to win me. Alas, Swithin, I ought to
have known better. The folly was great, and the suffering be upon
my head! I ought not to have consented to that last interview: all
was well till then!. . . Well, I have borne much, and am not
unprepared. As for you, Swithin, by simply pressing straight on
your triumph is assured. Do not communicate with me in any way--not
even in answer to this. Do not think of me. Do not see me ever any
more.--Your unhappy
VIVIETTE.'
Swithin's heart swelled within him in sudden pity for her, first;
then he blanched with a horrified sense of what she had done, and at
his own relation to the deed. He felt like an awakened somnambulist
who should find that he had been accessory to a tragedy during his
unconsciousness. She had loosened the knot of her difficulties by
cutting it unscrupulously through and through.
The big tidings rather dazed than crushed him, his predominant
feeling being soon again one of keenest sorrow and sympathy. Yet
one thing was obvious; he could do nothing--absolutely nothing.
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