"He will be surprised, startled and hurt," she thought. "He does not believe I have strength to leave him. But I will go--and he shall follow me and sue hard, before I return to him. Not until I am gone will he fully realize what my love has been to him. If I were his wife, now, I could not go, and he would know I could not. When he stops and thinks what this step might mean--and _all_ it might mean, I know he will regret having driven me to it. Even if he has tired of me himself, man-like, he will dread the possibility of my going to another lover--as many women in my situation would do. But go where I will I shall be true to him--oh, so true! for I must love him, and him only till I die. It is my fate." So she had talked to herself while she made her plans. Now, when she had told him that she was going away, she looked up in his face, expecting to see surprise and chagrin. Instead, she saw only relief, intense relief. "Yes, Dolores, it is better that we should part, even as you say," he answered. "There is a better and a truer life for each of us, than the life we are living, even if it is a lonelier one. We have made a great mistake, but we can rectify it in a measure, by parting now." All hope died in her heart. Her face flushed, her breast heaved with violent emotion. "You are late in finding this out!" she said, bitterly; "but I believe it is customary with men, to never discover mistakes of this kind, until the woman's life is wrecked. It is so very natural for a man to moralize standing on a crushed and ruined heart." "Dolores, let us part without any bitter words, for heaven's sake!" he cried. "Our mistake, our sin, whatever we may choose to call it, has been mutual. I never lured you to destruction; I never deceived you; I never meant to wrong you. You understood the world, you were no ignorant girl: you were a woman, old enough to know the importance of the step I proposed." "Had I been a young girl I should never have yielded," she answered. "It is the ripe fruit which falls when a south wind shakes the tree." "Well, you must not forget that we _agreed_ upon the course of action which has resulted in our misery. Neither should blame the other. Let us part friends, not enemies." "Friends!" and all of wounded pride and scorned love, and hopeless passion was in her voice as she repeated the word. Ah! when will a man ever learn that he cannot offer a more cruel insult to a woman he has once professed to love, than to call her his "friend." Percy felt great drops of perspiration starting out on his brow. He drew his handkerchief from his pocket, and with it a letter fluttered and fell at Dolores' feet. She picked it up, and she might have returned it without a glance at the superscription had not Percy sprung forward with a guilty flush, crying hurriedly, "Excuse my awkwardness; give me the letter, please?"