"I have never known
whether she was dead or alive, married, or, terrible thought, perhaps
driven into a reckless life by her one false step with me. This last
fear has been a constant torture to me all these years.
"The world is cruel in its judgment of woman. And yet I know that it
is woman herself who has shaped the opinions of the world regarding
these matters. If men had had their way since the world began, there
would be no virtuous women. Woman has realised this fact, and she
has in consequence walled herself about with rules and conventions
which have in a measure protected her from man. When any woman
breaks through these conventions and errs, she suffers the scorn of
others who have kept these self-protecting and society-protecting
laws; and, conscious of their scorn, she believes all hope is lost
for ever.
"The fear that Berene took this view of her one mistake, and plunged
into a desperate life, has embittered my whole existence. Never
before did a man suffer such a mental hell as I have endured for this
one act of sin and weakness. Yet the world, looking at my life of
success, would say if it knew the story, 'Behold how the man goes
free.' Free! Great God! there is no bondage so terrible as that of
the mind. I have loved Berene Dumont with a changeless passion for
twenty-three years, and there has not been a day in all that time
that I have not during some hours endured the agonies of the damned,
thinking of all the disasters and misery that might have come into
her life through me.
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