union counted for nothing now. It had been soul to soul, but never hand in
hand, and there were no little things to remember him by.

Then there set in a kind of Arctic winter. I crawled into myself as into a
snow-hut. I hated my solitude and yet dreaded any one who disturbed it.
That phase, of course, passed like the others. I took up life again, and
began to read the papers and consider the cut of my gowns. But there was
one question that I could not be rid of, that haunted me night and day.
Why had he never loved me? Why had I been so much to him, and no more? Was
I so ugly, so essentially unlovable, that though a man might cherish me as
his mind's comrade, he could not care for me as a woman? I can't tell you
how that question tortured me. It became an obsession.

My poor friend, do you begin to see? I had to find out what some other man
thought of me. Don't be too hard on me! Listen first--consider. When I
first met Vincent Rendle I was a young woman, who had married early and
led the quietest kind of life; I had had no "experiences." From the hour
of our first meeting to the day of his death I never looked at any other
man, and never noticed whether any other man looked at me. When he died,
five years ago, I knew the extent of my powers no more than a baby. Was it
too late to find out? Should I never know _why?_

Forgive me--forgive me. You are so young; it will be an episode, a mere
"document," to you so soon! And, besides, it wasn't as deliberate, as
cold-blooded as these disjointed lines have made it appear. I didn't plan
it, like a woman in a book. Life is so much more complex than any
rendering of it can be. I liked you from the first--I was drawn to you
(you must have seen that)--I wanted you to like me; it was not a mere
psychological experiment. And yet in a sense it was that, too--I must be
honest. I had to have an answer to that question; it was a ghost that had