Newport daily independent., 1903-04-03

with the years that have gone by, but my reputation of coldness and indifference to love has kept pace with my fame. Men have loved me, yet I have never been able to find one who could equal that lover of an hour.
 And to-day we have met again. Years have scattered silver in his dark hair. There was haunted look in the eyes which had not been there before He returned to me freed from the bonds which had once sep arated us; his wife is dead; has been dead a year, and he has come to ask me to take her place. But l refused; my pride has always been such that I could never accept the love of a man who had loved another enough to make her his wife.
 My heart was virgin of any affec- ton. I would not give it in exchange for one from which the memory of another love had taken the fresh ness. l told him this as gently as I could for I saw that he was in ear nest, and pitied his disappointment, but nothing can express the look of terror, despair, agony which swept over his face at my words.
 "You refuse, you will not marry me; you can't accept my offer Oh, it can't be so! l misunderstood you! Tell me-tell me it is not so, that it is a mistake!"
 Moved by the agony of his voice, l was some time without answering, but my resolution was taken. Noth- ing could change it. So I at last an swered:
 'I am deeply grieved that you take my refusal so much to heart, but can't change it. l may not be like other women, but the thought that you had loved another, that she had your first kisses, that to her you gave the best of your heart and life, would take from my own existence all the bliss your love could bring it. l would be jealous of the dead.
 "Do you suppose that the man you would marry would not have had other loves? Where is the man who in his life has had but one love?" he objected, his face white and working.
 "Yes, know that. But those loves would not make me jealous, for man does not attach much importance to them. But the love for wife is diff ferent; it is the companionship of years, the devotion of every day that I could not think, of without fearing that of the two he preferred her!"
 He rose at these words and seized my arm. His eyes were wild and glnring like those of a mad man, and when he spoke his tones, though low, sounded with shrill accents to my ears:
 "You should not think that, for it was because l loved you so much, so .passicnately, that l killed her!
 l started back with the cry:
 Killed her!"
 "Yes," he laughed, not needing the sudden horror which must have swept over my face. "Yes, I killed her to have you. After that meeting in your home, I could think of nothing else; possess you, I must, at any cost. There was an obstacle in the way my wife-but that was of small con- sideration with a passion like mine. set to work to remove that ob stacle. She began to pine. The slow poison did it's work, and in two years time I was free. But I waited a year before I came to you. 1 didn't want to be suspected, you know, But now there is no danger; they think she died a natural death, and we are free to love one another. Free! Free at last!"
 I started back terrified, spell-bound by horror. And this was the man had loved! This, murderer! Just then we were interrupted. Two men rushed into the room. The next min ute my visitor was overpowered and handcuffed. Too startled to cry out, l remained transfixed to the spot. But one of the men drew near to me and said:
 'You must pardon the abrupt way we invaded your home, but we feared for your safety. That unfortunate man is mad, has been mad for the last eight years. In his madness he says he loves you, and that that love has caused him to murder his wife"
 "Then his wife is not dead?" I man. aged to say.
 "No, but his madness took such turn that her life was in danger, and she was compelled to have him shut up in madhouse. Last week he es- capped, after robbing the guard of all the money he had We thought that he must have come to you, so we fol lowed him here"
 They took him away and I was alone. Had he been what he had pre- tended to he-a murderer-T could have forgotten him, but as it is I must always remember that one man loved me to madness.