“Tomorrow is my wedding-day. Tomorrow at twelve. This may strike you as strange. Well, I have waited—I don’t know how long—it has seemed like years to me—for some word, but I knew it was not to be. Your last letter showed me that. I knew that you did not intend to return, and so I went back to Mr. ——. I had to. What else have I to look forward to? You know how unhappy I am here with my family, now that you are gone, in spite of how much they care for me. “Oh, Theo, you must think me foolish for writing this. I am ashamed of myself. Still, I wanted to let you know, and to say good-bye, for although you have been indifferent I cannot bear any hard feelings toward you. I will make Mr. —— a good wife. He understands I do not love him, but that I appreciate him. Tomorrow I will marry him, unless—unless something happens. You ought not to have told me that you loved me, Theo, unless you could have stayed with me. You have caused me so much pain. “But I must say good-bye. This is the last letter I shall ever write you. Don’t send my letters now—tear them up. It is too late. Oh, if you only knew how hard it has been to bring myself to this! “ALICE.” I sat and stared at the floor after reading this. The pain I had caused was a heavy weight. The implication that if I would come to Chicago before noon of this day, or telegraph for her to delay, was too much. What if I should go to Chicago and get her—then what? To her it would be a beautiful thing, the height of romance, saving her from a cruel or dreary fate; but what of me? Should I be happy? Was my profession or my present restless and uncertain state of mind anything to base a marriage on? I knew it was not.... I also knew that Alice, in spite of my great sadness and affection for her, was really nothing more to me than a passing bit of beauty, charming in itself but of no great import to me. I was sad for her and for myself, saddest because of that chief characteristic of mine and of life which will not let anything endure permanently: love, wealth, fame. I was too restless, too changeful. There rose before me a picture of my finances as compared with what they ought to be, and of any future in marriage based on it. Actually, as I looked at it then, it was more the fault of life than mine. These thoughts, balancing with the wish I had for greater advancement, caused me as usual to hesitate. But I was in no danger of doing anything impulsive: there was no great impelling passion in this. It was mere sentiment, growing more and more roseate and less and less operative. I groaned inwardly, but night came and the next day, and I had not answered. At noon Alice had been married, as she afterward told me—years afterward, when the fire was all gone and this romance was ended forever. ------------------------------------------------------------------------