Memories! As I lay there upon my hard, narrow bed, being whirled through those suffocating tunnels in the cliffs beside the Mediterranean, I could not somehow get away from memory. The story this mysterious woman had related had awakened all the sad recollections of my own life. It seemed as though an avalanche of cruel truths confronted my mental vision. At every instant those truths struck a blow that left a scar deep and unsightly as any made by the knife. There was tragedy in every one. The first that came to me was of a day long ago. Ah me! I was young then, a child in years, a novice in experience, on that day when I admitted to Ernest my deep and fervent affection. How brief it all had been! I had, alas! now awakened to the hard realities of life and to the anguish the heart is capable of holding. The sweetest part of love, the absolute trust, had died long ago. My heart had lost its lightness never to return, for his love for me was dead. His fond tenderness of those by-gone days was, alas! only a memory. Yet he must have loved me! With me it had been the love of my womanhood--the love that is born with youth, that overlooks, forgives, and loves again; that gives friendship, truth, and loyalty. What, I wondered, were his thoughts when we had encountered each other at Monte Carlo? He showed neither interest nor regret. No, he had cast me aside, leaving me to endure that crushing sorrow and brain-torture which had been the cause of my long illness. He remembered nothing. To him our love was a mere incident. Of a verity, memory is the scar of truth’s cruel wound. I lay there wondering to myself if ever again I should feel any uplifting joy or any heartrending sorrow. Ah! if women could only outgrow the child part of their natures, hearts would not bleed so much. One of the greatest surprises in life is to discover how much sorrow the heart can bear, how acutely it can ache, how it can be strained to the utmost tension, crowded with agony, and yet not break. This is moralizing and smacks of sentiment, but it is nature--after you get acquainted with it. The train roared on, the woman above me slept soundly, and with the tears starting in my eyes I tried hard to burn the bridges into the past and seek forgetfulness in sleep. The process of burning, alas! can never be accomplished, thanks to one’s too retentive memory, but slumber came to me at last, and I must have dozed some time, for when I awoke we were in Genoa, and daylight was already showing through the chinks of the crimson blinds.