"Only one thing troubles me--the grief of the poor girl I told you

of. She follows me about, and is here all the time, so that I feel

as if I were possessed by her secret. In fact, I'm afraid I'll

blab it out to somebody. I think you would be sorry to see her.

She tries to persuade herself that because her soul did not

consent she was really not to blame. That is the thing that women

are always saying, isn't it? They draw this distinction when it is

too late, and use it as a quibble to gloss over their fault. Oh, I

gave it her! I told her she should have thought of that in time,

and died rather than yield. It was all very fine to talk of a

minute of weakness--mere weakness of bodily will, not of virtue,

but the world splits no straws of that sort. If a woman has fallen

she has fallen, and there is no question of body or soul.

"Oh dear, how she cried! When I caught sight of her red eyes, I

felt she ought to get herself forgiven. And after all I'm not so

sure that she should tell her husband, seeing that it would so

shock and hurt him. She thinks that after one has done wrong the

best thing to do next is to say nothing about it. There is

something in that, isn't there?

"One thing I must say for the poor girl--she has been a different

woman since this happened. It has converted her. That's a shocking

thing to say, but it's true. I remember that when I was a girl in

the convent, and didn't go to mass because I hadn't been baptized

and it was agreed with the Baron that I shouldn't be, I used to

read in the Lives of the Saints that the darkest moments of 'the

drunkenness of sin' were the instants of salvation. Who knows?

Perhaps the very fact by which the world usually stamps a woman as

bad is in this case the fact of her conversion. As for my friend,

she used to be the vainest young thing in Rome, and now she cares

nothing for the world and its vanities.

"Two days hence my letter will fall into your hands--why can't I

do so too? Love me always. That will lift me up to your own level,

and prove that when you fell in love with me love wasn't quite

blind. I'm not so old and ugly as I was yesterday, and at all

events nobody could love you more. Good-night! I open my window to

say my last good-night to the stars over Monte Mario, for that's

where England is! How bright they are to-night! How beautiful!

ROMA."




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