Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/56

 feel as unhappy if they had committed a great sin as I feel about that kiss?

The music over at the Curtises' has but just stopped. Somebody has been serenading one of the Curtis girls—a college crowd, I think. They sang a thing I do not know. But the German words came over quite distinctly:

My cheeks blaze till they smart and ache. I feel as if the whole world knew. I feel as if the climbing rose told, and the iris, the June lilies, and even the poor gray toad that Job tormented; as if every sweet, loving, gracious thing and every little, common, unpopular thing in nature conspired against me; and as if the moon sided with them, and the warm west wind drove them on.

And the moths—now I have it! It was the moths. They who delight in dying, and die of delight—they would be the first to tell of me. They would see me led to delight and death, and not be sorry for me at all. Nobody would be sorry for me.

And yet I do not wish or mean to marry this man—nor any man; no, not any man. That is my nature.