“I want you to believe this, for it is written with absolute sincerity, and if my hope of the future should never be realized, please read this over, and over again, and feel that I am married only in penance for being unworthy of you. Wherever I am, and whatever my condition, I beg of you to remember that I love only you; that I will never love any one else, and that with my last breath I will tenderly speak your name. “I do not believe God will be so cruel as to separate us, but if He should, the knowledge that you knew I continued to love you would make my loss easier to bear. If I should consent to be married, it would be to some one who cared for nothing but my promise to live with him; and if I could call him up from the future now to stand beside me, I would bravely tell him that I love only Clinton Bragg, and that though my mind may change, my heart never will. “If I should be so unfortunate as to have a husband other than you, I would be dutiful and just to him, but my love I would reserve until I met you in heaven, when, realizing how perfect it is, you would accept it. Loving you always. “MATEEL.” I folded the letter, and handed it back to him, and as it touched his fingers, he shuddered, as though overtaken by a chill. “The very touch of it penetrates my marrow,” he said, after putting it away in his pocket as though it were red-hot; “but for all my dread of its infamous contents, I have read it a hundred times. If I am tossing about at night, unable to sleep from thinking of it, I cannot help making a light, and reading it again.” “Did you ever talk to her about it?” I asked, and I am sure I was trembling all over; for I felt that Jo Erring, with all his prospects, was now a wreck and would never be himself again. “Not about this, directly,” he answered, “but she has told me that she was engaged to Bragg. She treated it so coolly that I thought perhaps such things are common, and that I am unreasonable to feel as I do. I am not familiar with the ways of good society; it may be that love is only an amusement, to be indulged in with every agreeable person; it may be that a woman is none the less a true woman for having been caressed and fondled by different men, and that it is no fault for a young girl to spend half a night with a lover who is liable to be succeeded in a month by another, but if such is the social creed, something convinces me that society is wrong, and that my revolting manhood is right.” He rose from his chair, and walked up and down in the dark part of the room again, and I could not help thinking of what Mr. Biggs had said: That every one has a private history.