"Listen, Antonio! You also, unintentionally I know, but certainly, have been in the wrong. You did not mean it; it's Fate which has been playing with us! In the sweet evenings of our engagement, when I talked to you of Rome with a tremble in my voice, you ought to have seen I was the dupe of foolish fancies. You ought to have discerned my vain and splendid dream through my words, as one discerns the moon through the evening mist. But instead you fed my dream; you talked of princesses, drawing-rooms, receptions! And when we arrived in Rome, you should have taken me at once to our own little home; you shouldn't have put between us for weeks and months persons dear, of course, to you, but total strangers to me. They were kind to me, I know, and are so still; I did my best to love them, but it was impossible to have communion of spirit with them all at once. Above all, you ought to have kept me away from that world of the rich of which I had dreamed, which is not and never will be mine. "Do you see? It's as if I had touched the fire and something had been burned in me. Is it my fault? If I am in fault it's because I am not able to pretend. Another woman in my place, feeling as I feel, would pretend, would apparently accept the reality, would remain with you; but--would poison your whole existence! Even I, you remember, I in the first months worried you with my sadness, my complaints, my contempt. I knew how wrong I was, I was ashamed and remorseful. If we had gone on like that, if the idea which I am broaching now had not flashed into my mind, we should have ended as so many end; bickering to-day, scandal to-morrow; crime, perhaps, in the end. I felt a vortex round me. It is not that I am romantic; I am sceptical rather than romantic; but everything small, sordid, vulgar, wounds my soul. I am like a sick person, who at the least annoyance becomes selfish, loses all conscience, and is capable of any bad action. Again I say, is it my fault? I was born like that and I can't re-make myself. There are many women like me, some of them worse because weaker. They don't know how to stop in time, on the edge of the precipice; they neither see, nor study how to avoid it. And yet, Antonio, I do care for you! I love you more, much more than when we were betrothed. I love you most passionately. It is chiefly on this account that I make the sacrifice of exiling myself from you for a while. I don't want to cause you unhappiness! Tears are bathing my face, my whole heart bleeds. But it is necessary, it is fate, that we separate! It kills me thinking of it, but it's necessary, necessary! Dear, dear, dear Antonio! understand me. Beloved Antonio, read and re-read my words, and don't give them a different signification from what is given by my heart. Above