“Of course I have no business to call you that, but then you see this is not a real letter, and you will never get it, for I shall post it presently in the fire; I am only playing at writing to you. Henry, my darling, my lover, my husband—you can see now that I am playing, or I shouldn’t call you that, should I?—I am very ill, I think that I am going to die, and I hope that I shall die quickly, quickly, and melt away into nothingness, to be blown about the world with the wind, or perhaps to bloom in a flower on my own grave, a flower for you to pick, my own. Henry, I saw you this afternoon; I wore that cloak your sister was choosing, and I think that I should have spoken to you, only she forbade me, and looked so fierce that she frightened me. Wasn’t it strange—it makes me laugh now, though I could have cried then to think of my standing there before you with that mantle on my shoulders, and of your looking at it, and taking no more notice of me than if I were a dressmaker’s shape? Perhaps that is what you took me for; and oh! I wish I was, for then I couldn’t feel. But I haven’t told you my secret yet, and perhaps you would like to know it. I am going to have a child, Henry—a child with big blue eyes, like yours. I was ashamed about it at first, and it frightened me. I used to dream at nights that everybody I knew was hunting me through the streets, pointing and gibbering at me, with my aunt, Mrs. Gillingwater, at the head of them. Now I’m not ashamed any more. I don’t care: why should I? Nobody will bother because a nameless girl has a nameless baby nobody except me; and I shall love it, and love it, and love it almost as much as I love you, my dear. But I forgot: I am going to die—kiss me when I am dead, Henry—pale lips for you to kiss, my own! so there will be no child after all, and that is a pity, for you won’t be able to see it. If it is born at all it will be born in heaven, or wherever poor girls who have gone wrong are sent to. I wonder what is the meaning of it, Henry; I wonder, not why I should love you, for I was bred to that, that was my birth-luck, but why I should suffer so because I love you? Is it my fault, or somebody else’s?—I don’t mean yours, dear, or is it simply a punishment because I am wicked?—because, if so, it seems curious. You see, if I had taken you at your word and married you, then I shouldn’t have been wicked—that is, in the eyes of others—and I shouldn’t have suffered. I should have been as good as all married women are, and oh! a great deal happier than most of them. But because I couldn’t think of marrying you, knowing that it would be your ruin, I am wicked and I suffer; at least I can guess no other reason. Well, Henry, I don’t mind suffering so long as you are happy, and I hope that you will always be happy. But I am selfish too: When I am dead, I hope that you will think of me at times —yes, and of the baby that wasn’t born—and if I can, I shall try to wander into your sleep now and again,