them; seventy-five of that number would have promptly avenged
themselves by active and obtrusive flirtation with other men. Mrs.
Wessington was the hundredth. On her neither my openly
expressed aversion nor the cutting brutalities with which I
garnished our interviews had the least effect.

"Jack, darling!" was her one eternal cuckoo cry: "I'm sure it's all a
mistake--a hideous mistake; and we'll be good friends again some
day. _Please_ forgive me, Jack, dear."

I was the offender, and I knew it. That knowledge transformed my
pity into passive endurance, and, eventually, into blind hate--the
same instinct, I suppose, which prompts a man to savagely stamp
on the spider he has but half killed. And with this hate in my
bosom the season of 1882 came to an end.

Next year we met again at Simla--she with her monotonous face
and timid attempts at reconciliation, and I with loathing of her in
every fibre of my frame. Several times I could not avoid meeting
her alone; and on each occasion her words were identically the
same. Still the unreasoning wail that it was all a "mistake"; and
still the hope of eventually "making friends." I might have seen
had I cared to look, that that hope only was keeping her alive. She
grew more wan and thin month by month. You will agree with
me, at least, that such conduct would have driven any one to
despair. It was uncalled for; childish; unwomanly. I maintain that
she was much to blame. And again, sometimes, in the black,
fever-stricken night-watches, I have begun to think that I might
have been a little kinder to her. But that really is a "delusion." I
could not have continued pretending to love her when I didn't;