"No, Miss Liddell; I am trying to tell you the whole truth. The man I loved never deceived me--never held put any hope that we could marry. He was not rich; there were impediments--what, I never knew. But I thought such love as he professed, and at the time felt for me, would last; and so long as he was mine, I wanted nothing more. Have you patience to hear more, or have I fallen too low to retain your interest?"
"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?"