“‘After that I seemed to tread on air, so happy and so full of anticipation was my whole being. I had been graduated the previous year, and I was then a student in Dr. Lincoln’s office, but I boarded at home, and saw Anna every day, counting the hours from the time I left her in the morning until I returned late in the afternoon to our fashionable dinner, for we observed such matters then. I shut my eyes at times, and those days come back again, bringing with them Anna as she used to look when she came out to meet me, her curls falling about her childish face, and her white robes giving her the look of an angel. I loved her too much. I almost placed her before Him who has declared He will have no idols there, and so I was terribly punished. We were to be married on her twentieth birthday, and until about a year previous to that time I had not the shadow of a suspicion that Anna’s love was not wholly my own. I well remember the time, a dreary, rainy autumn day, when she came into my room, and leaning one hand on my shoulder, parted my hair with the other, as she was wont to do. “‘“Richard,” she began, “isn’t it just as wicked to act a lie as it is to tell one?” “‘“I supposed it was,” I said, and she continued: “‘“Then you won’t be angry when I tell you what I must. I was very young when I promised to be your wife, and I am afraid I did not quite know what I was doing. I love you dearly, Richard, but you seem more like my brother; and, Richard, don’t turn so white and tremble so,—I shall marry you if you wish it; but please don’t, oh! don’t—” “‘She was weeping bitterly now,—was on her knees before me, my Anna, my promised wife. I had thought her low-spirited for some days, but had no thought of this, and the shock was a terrible one. I could not, however, see her so disturbed, when I had the power to relieve her, and after talking with her calmly, dispassionately, I released her from the engagement and she was free. I did not even hint at the possibility of her learning to love me in time, because I fancied she would be more apt to do so if wholly untrammelled; but that hope alone kept my heart from breaking during the wretched weeks which followed, and in which Anna’s health seemed failing, and her low spirits to increase. A change of air was proposed, and she was sent to Boston, where my mother has relatives. It was on the eve of the new year when she came back to us, with a white, scared look upon her face, which became at last habitual, making it painful to look at her, she appeared so nervous and frightened. It was as if some great terror were continually haunting her, or some mighty secret, which it was death to divulge and worse than death to cover up. I supposed it to be a fear of what I might require of her, and so I said to her one day that if the thing preying upon her mind was a dread lest I should seek to make her my wife, she might put that aside, as I should not annoy her in that way.