fabricated as might be heard in a long day.

But in bitterness Guida kept her own counsel.

This day when she passed the undertaker's shop she had gone to visit the
grave of her grandfather. He had died without knowing the truth, and her
heart was hardened against him who had brought misery upon her. Reaching
the cottage in the Place du Vier Prison now, she took from a drawer the
letter Philip had written her on the day he first met the Comtesse
Chantavoine. She had received it a week ago. She read it through
slowly, shuddering a little once or twice. When she had finished,
she drew paper to her and began a reply.

The first crisis of her life was passed. She had met the shock of utter
disillusion; her own perfect honesty now fathomed the black dishonesty of
the man she had loved. Death had come with sorrow and unmerited shame.
But an innate greatness, a deep courage supported her. Out of her wrongs
and miseries now she made a path for her future, and in that path
Philip's foot should never be set. She had thought and thought, and had
come to her decision. In one month she had grown years older in mind.
Sorrow gave her knowledge, it threw her back on her native strength and
goodness. Rising above mere personal wrongs she grew to a larger sense
of womanhood, to a true understanding of her position and its needs. She
loved no longer, but Philip was her husband by the law, and even as she
had told him her whole mind and heart in the days of their courtship and
marriage, she would tell him her whole mind and heart now. Once more, to
satisfy the bond, to give full reasons for what she was about to do, she
would open her soul to her husband, and then no more! In all she wrote
she kept but two things back, her grandfather's death--and one other.
These matters belonged to herself alone.