I felt
the dreadful reproach that honest people--even the kindest of honest
people--were to me in themselves. A heart-breaking sensation of
loneliness kept with me, go where I might, and do what I might, and see
what persons I might. It was my duty, I know, to try and get on with my
fellow-servants in my new place. Somehow, I couldn't make friends with
them. They looked (or I thought they looked) as if they suspected what
I had been. I don't regret, far from it, having been roused to make the
effort to be a reformed woman--but, indeed, indeed it was a weary life.
You had come across it like a beam of sunshine at first--and then you
too failed me. I was mad enough to love you; and I couldn't even attract
your notice. There was great misery--there really was great misery in
that.
"Now I am coming to what I wanted to tell you. In those days of
bitterness, I went two or three times, when it was my turn to go out,
to my favourite place--the beach above the Shivering Sand. And I said to
myself, 'I think it will end here. When I can bear it no longer, I think
it will end here.' You will understand, sir, that the place had laid
a kind of spell on me before you came.
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