"I have made up my mind to die. Not out of passion or petulance,--but from deliberate choice, and as I think, necessity. My brain is tired of problems,--my body is tired of life; it is best to make an end. The idea of death,--which means annihilation,--is very sweet to me. I am glad to feel that by my own will and act I can silence this uneasy throbbing of my heart, this turmoil and heat of my blood,--this tortured aching of my nerves. Young as I am, I have no delight now in existence,--I see nothing but my love's luminous eyes, his god-like features, his enthralling smile,--and these are lost to me. For a brief while he has been my world, life and time,--he has gone,--and without him there is no universe. How could I endure the slow, wretched passing of hours, days, weeks, months and years alone?--though it is better to be alone than in the dull companionship of the self-satisfied, complacent and arrogant fool who is my husband. He has left me for ever, so he says in a letter the maid brought to me an hour ago. It is quite what I expected of him,--what man of his type could find pardon for a blow to his own _amour propre_! If he had studied my nature, entered into my emotions, or striven in the least to guide and sustain me,--if he had shown me any sign of a great, true love such as one sometimes dreams of and seldom finds,--I think I should be sorry for him now,--I should even ask his forgiveness for having married him. But he has treated me precisely as he might treat a paid mistress,--that is, he has fed me, clothed me, and provided me with money and jewels in return for making me the toy of his passions,--but he has not given me one touch of sympathy,--one proof of self-denial or humane forbearance. Therefore, I owe him nothing. And now he, and my love who will not be my lover, have gone away together; I am free to do as I will with this small pulse within me called life, which is after all, only a thread, easily broken. There is no one to say me nay, or to hold my hand back from giving myself the final _quietus_. It is well I have no friends; it is good for me that I have probed the hypocrisy and social sham of the world, and that I have mastered the following hard truths of life,--that there is no love without lust,--no friendship without self-interest,--no religion without avarice,--and no so-called virtue without its accompanying stronger vice. Who, knowing these things, would care to take part in them! On the verge of the grave I look back along the short vista of my years, and I see myself a child in this very place, this wooded Willowsmere; I can note how that life began to which I am about to put an end. Pampered, petted and spoilt, told that I must 'look pretty' and take pleasure in my clothes, I was even at the age of