The Brookings register. [volume] (Brookings, Brookings County, S.D.) 1903-1971, 1907-01-03
CHAPTER XXI.

Alexis, in a wild and disordered
hand, which more than sufficiently re-
vealed the agitation of his mind, wrote
thus:
Dearest. Always dearest. Your
letter cuts me to the heart. | can say
nothing in answer to it, but that my
position makes it impossible for me
either to explain or to extenuate.
was not wholly honest in the morning.
[ shall never dare to be wholly honest
with anybody any more. | have in
yolved myself in a maze from which |
can see no possibility Of escape. A
scrupulous adherence to candor and
v~eracity are not the common badges
of you sex, but you are the soul OF
honor in that regard, and | know that
after this enforced confession you a
never respect me again. see no
course before me except to release you
from a compact into which | ought
never to have enticed you. Go free OF
ME, Lillian, and Of my wrecked and
broken life. When you think OF me at
all think of me leniently; and think of
me as one who loved you, and will love
you till the end. Good-by. Heaven
bless you. A blessing hurts nobody,
even when It comes from one so hope
less and forlorn as I am"
That was all, and If the reader wept
over 1t, there was little room for
u,o,ln. t. 1aS& nth hnr ru11lao oil
unsolved, but 1t confirmed the chief
suspicion which had tortured her.
Alexis had not dealt honestly with her,
and there was something in his life
which he was fain to conceal, ever at
the expense Of honor. What that
something was she had no means OF
guessing, but it was enough that 1t ex-
listed.
When a woman has really given her
whole heart to a man 1t Is difficult to
say what shock her love will not sur
vive, but in Lilian's case there had
been no such surrender. She had adj
mired Alexis greatly, but she had al
ways found defects Of his character
visible. She could analyze and criti-
else as no woman in love with a man
could ever do yet in the history Of the
world. He had never been the man Of
men to her, the only man, the incarna-
ton of all the excellences width which
the female lover bowers the he of her
unalterable choice. She grieved, but
1t was vastly less for the breach which
she clearly saw to be inevitable than
for the fall Of one whom she had re-
spected and had once believed herself
to love. She accused herself Of shall
iowness and ~disloyalty. She thought
that II a woman who really loved had
been placed In her position. she would
have rushed impulsively to the suffer.
er and would have declared herself
ready to face any obloquy for his dear
sake; would have rejoiced to lift him
to his better self again, and to share
his sorrows.
But Lillian had no impulse Of that
kind, though her grief and pity were
real enough to throw her into a kind
Of low fever, which hung about her for
many days. She kept her room and
denied herself to visitors, ever to
Miss Molloy, who came to recapitulate
In fuller terms the news she had al
ready sent Of the surrender of Billery.
But Miss Molloy absolutely declined
to be denied, and having at last Sc
cured admission under promise that
she would not talk, and would with
gun to be tired Of her visit, she set
herself ~resolutely to work to wake her
friend from the uninterested languar
into which she had fallen. and sue
eeeded so well that she was asked to
prolong her stay. Lillian had thought
she would never hnd heart to laugh
again, but she did laugh. and that