For I still feel his and I still feel him alive. You can love people, and then forget them, and love somebody else; or love somebody else without forgetting. Love is simple and gentle and, I suppose, gives way. Alexander doesn't give way. I shall hurt you now, I'm afraid, but I must say it. After him there can be no other man for me. I think I'm sorry I ever married him, for I could have loved somebody else and yet looked on at him. Or couldn't I? You'll say I couldn't. Anyhow, as it is, I've come too near to him, seen too much of him, become too much a part of him. You might think me mad if I told you he often seemed to be with me and that I'm not frightened, but admire and laugh as I used; I needn't fear any more. So it is; and since it is so, how can I come to you? What is it they call widows on tombstones and in the _Times_? Relicts, isn't it? I'm literally his relict, something he's left behind. As I say, the only thing. He can't come back for me, I suppose. But I feel as if he'd pick me up somewhere some time, and we should begin over again, and go on together. Where to I don't know. I never knew where he would end by taking me to. And you, dear friend, mustn't make his relict your wife. It's not right for you, it wouldn't be right for me. We should pretend that nothing had happened, that I'd made a mistake, that it was luckily and happily over, and that I was doing now what I ought to have done in the beginning. All that's quite false. I suppose everybody has one great thing to do in life, one thing that determines what they're to be and how they're to end. I did my great thing, for good or evil, when I became his wife. I can't undo it or go back on it, I can't become what I was before I did it. I can't be now what you think me and wish me to be. His stamp is on me.