To-morrow we were to have gone to the High Bailiff; this day week we were to have sailed for Sydney, and two months hence we were to have reached Winter Quarters.

But I cannot go with you to the High Bailiff's; I cannot go with you to Sydney; I cannot go with you to Winter Quarters; I cannot go anywhere from here. It is impossible, quite impossible.

I have loved too much, dear, so the power of life is burnt out for me.

My great love--love for my mother, for my darling baby, and above all for you--has consumed me and I cannot live much longer.

Forgive me for not telling you this before--for deceiving you by saying that I was getting better and growing stronger when I knew I was not. I used to think it was cowardice which kept me from telling you the truth, but I see now that it was love, too.

I was so greedy of the happiness I have had since I came to this house of love that I could not reconcile myself to the loss of it. You will try to understand that (won't you, dear?), and so forgive me for keeping you in the dark down to the very last moment.

This will be a great grief to you. I would die with a glad heart to save you a moment's pain, yet I could not die at ease if I did not think you would miss me and grieve for me. I like to think that in the time to come people will say, "Once he loved Mary O'Neill, and now there is no other woman in the world for him." I should not be a woman if I did not feel like that--should I?

But don't grieve too much, dearest. Only think! If I had been strong and had years and years still to live, what a life would have been before me--before both of us.

We couldn't have lived apart, could we? And if we had married I should never have been able to shake off the thought that the world, which would always be opening its arms to you, did not want me. That would be so, wouldn't it--after all I have gone through? The world never forgives a woman for the injuries it inflicts on her itself, and I have had too many wounds, darling, to stand by your side and be any help to you.

Oh, I know what you would say, dearest. "She gave up everything for love of me, choosing poverty, obscurity, and pain above wealth and rank and ease, and therefore I will choose her before everything else in the world." But I know what would come to us in the end, dear, and I should always feel that your love for me had dragged you down, closed many of the doors of life to you. I should know that you were always hearing behind you the echoing footsteps of my fate, and that is the only thing I could not bear.

Besides, my darling, there is something else between us in this world--the Divine Commandment! Our blessed Lord says we can never be man and wife, and there is no getting beyond that, is there?

Oh, don't think I reproach myself with loving you--that I think it a sin to do so. I do not now, and never shall. He who made my heart what it is must know that I am doing no wrong.

And don't think I regret that night at Castle Raa. If I have to answer to God for that I will do so without fear, because I know He will know that, when the cruelty and self-seeking of others were trying to control my most sacred impulses, I was only claiming the right He gave me to be mistress of myself and sovereign of my soul.

_You_ must not regret it either, dearest, or reproach yourself in any way, for when we stand together before God's footstool He will see that from the beginning I was yours and you were mine, and He will cover us with the wings of His loving mercy.

Then don't think, dear, that I have ever looked upon what happened afterwards--first in Ellan and then in London--as, in any sense, a punishment. I have never done that at any time, and now I believe from the bottom of my heart that, if I suffered while you were away, it was not for my sin but my salvation.

Think, dear! If you and I had never met again after my marriage, and if I had gone on living with the man they had married me to, my soul would have shrivelled up and died. That is what happens to the souls of so many poor women who are fettered for life to coarse and degrading husbands. But my soul has not died, dearest, and it is not dying, whatever my poor body may do, so I thank my gracious God for the sweet and pure and noble love that has kept it alive.

All the same, my darling, to marry again is another matter. I took my vow before the altar, dear, and however ignorantly I took it, or under whatever persuasion or constraint, it is registered in heaven.

It cannot be for nothing, dear, that our blessed Lord made that stern Commandment. The Church may have given a wrong interpretation to it--you say it has, and I am too ignorant to answer you, even if I wished to, which I don't. But I am sure my Lord foresaw all such mistakes, and all the hardships that would come to many poor women (perhaps some men, too), as well as the wreck the world might fall to for want of this unyielding stay, when He issued his divine and irrevocable law that never under any circumstances should marriage be broken.

Oh, I am sure of it, dear, quite sure, and before His unsearchable wisdom I bow my head, although my heart is torn.

Yet think, darling, how light is the burden that is laid upon us!

Marriage vows are for this world only. The marriage law of the Church which lasts as long as life does not go on one moment longer. The instant death sets my body free, my soul may fly to where it belongs. If I were going to live ten, twenty, thirty years, this might be cold comfort, but I am not.

Then why should we be sorry? You cannot be mine in this life and I cannot be yours, so Death comes in its mercy and majesty to unite us!

Our love will go far beyond life, and the moment the barrier of death is passed our union will begin! And once it begins it will never end! So Death is not really a separator, but a great uniter! Don't you see that, dearest? One moment of parting--hardly a moment, perhaps--and then we shall be together through all Eternity! How wonderful! How glorious! How triumphant!

Do you believe in individual immortality, dear? I do. I believe that in the other life I shall meet and know my dear ones who are in heaven.

More than that, I believe that the instant I pass from this life I shall live with my dear ones who are still on earth. That is why I am willing to go--because I am sure that the moment I draw my last breath I shall be standing by your side.

So don't let there be any weeping for me, dear. "Nothing is here for tears; nothing but well and fair." Always remember--love is immortal.

I will not say that I could not have wished to live a little longer--if things had been otherwise with both of us. I should like to live to see your book published and your work finished (I know it will be some day), and baby grow up to be a good girl and a beautiful one too (for that's something, isn't it?); and I should like to live a little longer for another reason, a woman's reason--simply to be loved, and to be told that I am loved, for though a woman may know that, she likes to hear it said and is never tired of hearing it.

But things have gone against us, and it is almost sinfully ungrateful to regret anything when we have so many reasons for thankfulness.

And then about Girlie--I used to think it would be terrible (for me, I mean) to die before she could be old enough to have any clear memory of her mother (such as I have of mine) to cherish and love--only the cold, blank, unfilled by a face, which must be all that remains to most of those whose parents passed away while they were children. But I am not afraid of that now, because I know that in the future, when our little girl asks about her mother, you will describe me to her as _you_ saw and remember me--and that will be _so_ much sweeter and lovelier than I ever was, and it will be _such_ a joy to think that my daughter sees me through her father's eyes.

Besides, dearest, there is something still more thrilling--the thought that Girlie may grow to be like me (like what you _think_ me), and that in the time to come she may startle you with undescribable resemblances, in her voice or smile, or laugh, to her mother in heaven, so that some day, perhaps, years and years hence, when she is quite grown up, she may touch your arm and you may turn quickly to look at her, and lo! it will seem to you as if Mary herself (_your_ Mary) were by your side. Oh Death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory?

Go on with your great work, dearest. Don't let it flag from any cold feeling that I am lost to you. Whenever you think of me, say to yourself, "Mary is here; Love is stronger than death, many waters cannot quench it."

Did you ever read Browning? I have been doing so during the last few days, nurse (she is quite a thoughtful woman) having lent me his last volume. When I read the last lines of what is said to have been his last poem I thought of you, dear:

"_No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time Greet the unseen with a cheer!

Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, 'Strive and thrive!' Cry 'Speed,--fight on, fare ever There as here!'_"

I am going to get up again to-day, dear, having something to do that is just a little important--to give you this manuscript book, in which I have been writing every day (or rather every night since you found me in London.)

You will see what it is, and why it was written, so I'll say no more on that subject.

I am afraid you'll find it very egotistical, being mainly about myself; but I seem to have been looking into my soul all the time, and when one does that, and gets down to the deep places, one meets all other souls there, so perhaps I have been writing the lives of some women as well.

I once thought I could write a real book (you'll see what vain and foolish things I thought, especially in my darker moments) to show what a woman's life may be when, from any cause whatsoever, she is denied the right God gave her of choosing the best for herself and her children.

There is a dream lying somewhere there, dear, which is stirring the slumber of mankind, but the awakening will not be in my time certainly, and perhaps not even in Girlie's.

And yet, why not?

Do you know, dearest, what it was in your wonderful book which thrilled me most? It was your description of the giant iceberg you passed in the Antarctic Ocean--five hundred feet above the surface of the sea and therefore five hundred below it, going steadily on and on, against all the force of tempestuous wind and wave, by power of the current underneath.

Isn't the movement of all great things in life like that, dearest? So perhaps the world will be a better place for Girlie than it has been for me. And in any case, I shall always feel that, after all and in spite of everything, it has been glorious to be a woman.

And now, my own darling, though we are only to be separated for a little while, I want to write what I should like to say when I part from you to-morrow if I did not know that something in my throat would choke me.

I want to tell you again that I love you dearly, that I have never loved anybody but you, and that no marriage vows will keep me from loving you to the last.

I want to thank you for the great, great love you have given me in return--all the way back from the time when I was a child. Oh, my dearest, may God for ever bless you for the sunshine you have brought into my life--every single day of it, joyful days and sorrowful ones, bright days and dark, but all shining with the glory of your love.

Never allow yourself to think that my life has not been a happy one.

Looking back on it now I feel as if I have always had happiness. And when I have not had happiness I have had something far higher and better--blessedness.

I have had _such_ joy in my life, dear--joy in the beauty of the world, in the sunshine and the moon and the stars and the flowers and the songs of the birds, and then (apart from the divine love that is too holy to speak about) in my religion, in my beloved Church, in the love of my dear mother and my sweet child, and above all--above all in _you_.

I feel a sense of sacred thankfulness to God for giving you to me, and if it has not been for long in this life, it will be for ever in the next.

So good-bye, my dearest me--_just for a little moment_! My dearest one, Good-bye!

MARY O'NEILL.