"MY DEAR PAUL,--I do not think you will be surprised at what I am about to tell you; and I try to hope that you will not be very much annoyed at it. I knew that it must come very shortly, and I have endeavoured as far as I could to prepare you for the news. "The pleasant life which we have been leading for the last few months, Paul--and I do not pretend to disguise my knowledge that it has been pleasant to you, any more than I shrink from acknowledging that it has been most delightful to me--has come to an end, and we must never meet again. This should be no tragic ending: there should be no shriek of woe or exclamations of remorse, or mutual taunts and invectives. It is played out, that is all; it has run down, and come naturally to a full-stop, and there is no use in attempting to set it going again. "I can understand your being horribly enraged when you first read this, and using all sorts of strong language about me, and vowing vengeance against me. But this will not last; your better sense will come to your aid; in a very little time you will thank me for having released you from obligations the fulfilment of which would have brought misery on your life, and will thank me for having been the first to put an end to an action which was very pleasant for the time it lasted, but which would have been very hopeless in the future. For my part, I don't reproach you, Paul, Heaven knows; I should be an ingrate if I did. "You have always treated me with the tenderest regard, and only very lately you have done me the highest honour which a man can do a woman, in asking her to become his wife. Don't think I treat this offer lightly, Paul; don't think I am not keenly alive to its value, as showing the affection, if nothing else, which you have, or rather must have had, for me. Do not think that it has been without a struggle that I have made up my mind to act as I am now doing, to write the letter which you now read. "But suppose I had said Yes, Paul; you know as well as I do the exact position which I should have occupied, and the effect which my occupancy of that position would have had on your future life. It was not--I do not say this with any intention of wounding you--it was not until you clearly found you could get me on no other terms that you made me this offer; and though probably you will not allow it even to yourself, you must know as well as I do, that after a while you would find yourself tied to a wife who was unsuited to you in many ways, and by marrying whom you had alienated your family from you, and disgraced yourself in the opinion of that world which you now profess to despise, but of whose verdict you really stand in the greatest awe.