“I can tell you nothing as to what we are likely to do next. As Sholto has given up all his prospects for me, I cannot honorably desert him. I know now that I have ruined myself for nothing, and I must at least try to hide from him that he has done likewise. I can see that he is not happy; but he tries so desperately to persuade himself that he is, and clings so to the idea that the world is well lost for me, that I have not the heart to undeceive him. So we are still lovers; and, cynical though it sounds, I make him a great deal happier in my insincerity than I could if I really loved him, because I humor him with a cunning quite incompatible with passion. He, on the other hand, being still sincere, tries my patience terribly with his jealousies and importunities. As he has nothing to do, he is almost always with me; and a man who has no office to go to—I dont care who he is—is a trial of which you can have no conception. So much for our present relations. But I fear—indeed I know—that they will not last long. I dare not look steadily at the future. In spite of all that he has sacrificed for me, I cannot live forever with him. There are times at which he inspires me with such a frenzy of aversion and disgust that I have to put the strongest constraint upon myself to avoid betraying my feelings to him. We intended going to the West Indies direct from here, in search of some idyllic retreat where we could live alone together. He still entertains this project; but as I have totally abandoned it I put him off with some pretext for remaining here whenever he mentions it. I have only one hope of gaining a separation without being open to the reproach of having deserted him. You remember how we disputed that Saturday about the merits of a grand passion, which I so foolishly longed for. Well, I have tried it, and proved it to be a lamentable delusion, selfish, obstinate, blind, intemperate, and transient. As it has evaporated from me, so it will evaporate from Sholto in the course of time. It would have done so already, but that his love was more genuine than mine. When the time comes, he will get rid of me without the least remorse; and so he will have no excuse for reviving his old complaints of my treachery.