The letter from Anita reached Stewart the following morning. She
said:--
"I have been thinking things over, Walter, and I am going to hurt
you very much--but not, believe me, without hurting myself.
Perhaps my uppermost thought just now is that I am disappointing
you, that I am not so big as you thought I would be. For now, in
this final letter, I can tell you how much I cared. Oh, my dear,
I did care!
"But I will not marry you. And when this reaches you I shall have
gone very quietly out of your life. I find that such philosophy
as I have does not support me to-night, that all my little rules
of life are inadequate. Individual liberty was one--but there is
no liberty of the individual. Life--other lives--press too
closely. You, living your life as seemed best and easiest, and
carrying down with you into shipwreck the little Marie
and--myself!
"For, face to face with the fact, I cannot accept it, Walter. It
is not only a question of my past against yours. It is of steady
revolt and loathing of the whole thing; not the flash of protest
before one succumbs to the inevitable, but a deep-seated hatred
that is a part of me and that would never forget.
"You say that you are the same man I would have married, only
more honest for concealing nothing. But--and forgive me this, it
insists on coming up in my mind--were you honest, really? You
told me, and it took courage, but wasn't it partly fear? What
motive is unmixed? Honesty--and fear, Walter.
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