cloak, arranged her shawl.... 'Good-bye... good-bye.... Oh, my unhappy
people, for ever strangers, a curse lies upon us! No one has ever cared
for me, was it likely he...' She suddenly ceased. 'No; one man loved
me,' she began again, wringing her hands, 'but death is all about me,
death and no escape! Now it is my turn.... Don't come after me,' she
cried shrilly. 'Don't come! don't come!'

I was petrified, while she rushed out; and an instant later, I heard the
slam downstairs of the heavy street door, and the window panes shook
again under the violent onslaught of the blast.

I could not quickly recover myself. I was only beginning life in those
days: I had had no experience of passion nor of suffering, and had
rarely witnessed any manifestation of strong feeling in others.... But
the sincerity of this suffering, of this passion, impressed me. If it
had not been for the manuscript in my hands, I might have thought that I
had dreamed it all--it was all so unlikely, and swooped by like a
passing storm. I was till midnight reading the manuscript. It consisted
of several sheets of letter-paper, closely covered with a large,
irregular writing, almost without an erasure. Not a single line was
quite straight, and one seemed in every one of them to feel the excited
trembling of the hand that held the pen. Here follows what was in the
manuscript. I have kept it to this day.


XVII

MY STORY