Page:Love's trilogy.djvu/175

 I have to tell you is that everything must be finished between you and me. I cannot and will not lie to you, I tell you just as it is. I am weary, hopelessly weary, I can no more.

'This came clearly to me this morning, when I had your last letter. I was still in bed when it was brought to me. I expected the letter, I knew it would come. Now, listen calmly to this, and don't judge me at once. I was lying wishing that just for once no letter would arrive, and I simply dreaded to see my landlady come in with the fat letter of which I knew every twist and turn of the writing on the envelope, and alas! even beforehand seemed to know the contents. The letter lay on the counterpane like a nightmare, it seemed heavy on my heart, filling me with a thousand vague fears. A grey oppression seemed to paralyse my brain and filled my soul with desperate weariness. I could not get myself to open the letter and read it.

'How long I lay like this I don't know. There were no clear thoughts in my head, only this heavy, grey oppression which made me so tired that now and again I fell into a nervous sleep.

'At last I forced myself with a wrench out of this drowsy state. I jumped out of bed, drew the curtains from the window so that the full daylight could stream in. Like a deliverance, almost like a happiness, the clear and conscious thought leapt into my mind, "It is over, it must be over."

'I will go on telling you the truth. I won't