When at last he spoke reservedly on the subject to his confidential friend, he said he had begun life a very poor boy, had struggled hard to reach a pinnacle, and it now seemed severe to be struck down from all his happiness by one individual, and that one the woman whom he had loved the most of all on earth. And when the listener to whom he spoke replied with praises of the physical and spiritual beauty of Mrs. Forrest, he exclaimed, “She now looks ugly to me: her face is black and hideous.” This friend, Lawson, wrote these words at the time: “I am persuaded that both parties are still warmly attached to one another. He, judging by his looks, has suffered deeply, and has grown ten years older during the last few months. She is not less affected.” At length a natural but unfortunate incident carried their alienation to the point of a violent and final rupture. In indignant reply to some cutting remarks on her sister, Mrs. Forrest inconsiderately said to her husband, “It is a lie!” If there was one point on which he had always been proudly scrupulous, as every friend would testify, it was that of being a man of the uttermost straightforward veracity, whatever might betide. The words, “It is a lie!” fell into his irascible blood like drops of molten iron. He restrained himself, and said, “If a man had said that to me he should die. I cannot live with a woman who says it.” From that moment separation was inevitable and irrevocable. A little later they agreed to part, mutually pledging themselves not to allow the cause to be made known. Before leaving his house she asked him to give her a copy of the works of Shakspeare as a memento of him. He did so, writing in it, “Mrs. Edwin Forrest, from Edwin Forrest,” a sad alteration from the inscription uniformly made in the books he had before presented to her, “From her lover and husband, Edwin Forrest.” Taking her in a carriage, with a large portrait of himself at the most glorious height of his physical life, he accompanied her to the house of her generous friends, Parke and Fanny Godwin, whose steadfast fidelity had caused them to offer her an asylum in this trying hour. Parting from each other silently at that hospitable door, the gulf of pain between them was henceforth without a bridge. Slow months passed on, various causes of irritation still at work, when the following letter, which explains itself, was written: