The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1907-04-17

She had told me she had heart trou-
BILE; but she had confided to no one
that she knew it might bring on the
end at any moment. She left a let
ctr, sealed and addressed to me:
Harvey: / shall never have the cour-
age to tell you, yet I feel you ought to
know. ! think every one attributes to
every one else less shrewdness than he
possesses. / know you have not given
me the credit of seeing that you did not
love me. And you were kind and
coDsiderate and SO patient with my
moods that no doubt ] should have been
deceived had I not known what love is.
| think, to have loved and to have been
loved develops in woman a sort OF
7ixth sense-sens. <veness to love. And
hat had been developed in me. and when
II never responded to your efforts to de-
Give me, I knew you did not love me.
Well, neither did / love you, though 1
able to hide it from you. And it has
,ften irritated that you were SO I'M
observant You know now the cause of
many of my difficult moods. which have
seemed causeless.
1 admired you from the first time
we met I liked you I have been proud
of you, I would not have been the wife
of any other man In the world 1 would
not have had any other father for my
children. But I have kept on loving the
man I loved before 1 met you.
for his weaknesses. 1 should never have
married him. though mother and Ed
both feared l would. 1 think / loved him
because l knew he loved me. That is
love independently. Men like to love:
women like to be loved And. poor. I'M
worthy creature that he was, still he
would have died for me, though God had
denied him the strength to live for me-
But all that God gave hin-the power to
he rro n6 differ
ent in my eyes from what he was in any
ones else in the world. And 1 loved him.
1 don't tell you this because l feel re-
greet or remorse. I don't; there never
aside. / tell you. because |
want you to remember me right after
I'm gone. Harvey dear. You may re-
member how I was silly and jealous or
you. and think I am mistaken about my
own feelings. But Jealousy doesn't mean
love. When people really love. l think
it's seldom that they're jealous. What
makes people jealous usually Is suspect
ing the other person OF having the same
sort of secret they have themselves. 1t
hurt nv vanity that you didn't love me;
and it stung me to think you cared Tor
some one else, just as l did,
I want you to remember me gently
And somehow, 1 think that. after you've
read this. you will even IL you did love
some one else II you ever see this at
all Harvey-and / may tear It up some
day on impulse-but if you ever do see 1t,
shall be dead. and we shall botn De
free And I want you to come to me and
look at me and
It ended thus abruptly. NO doubt
she had intended to open the envelope
and finish it-but, what more was there
10 say?
I think she must have been content
with the thoughts that were in my
mind as / looked down at her lying in
Deaths inscrutable calm. | had one
If nv secretaries hunt out the man
she had loved-a sad, stranded wreck
II a man he had become; but since
hat day he has been sheltered at
east from the worst of the buffetings
o which his incapacity for life ex-
posed him.
There was time when l despised
then l pitied them; but
atterly / have felt for them the SYM
sense of brotherhood. Are
We not all incapable? Differing only
n degree, and how slightly there, if
We look at ourselves without vanity;
ike practice-sketches put upon the
late by Natures learned hand and
sponged away.