Is there anything so very
wonderful in that? Just remember who I was. Among the honest women in my
own station in life, where could I have found the like of _her_? Could
_they_ walk as she walked? and look as she looked? When _they_ gave me a
kiss, did their lips linger over it as hers did? Had _they_ her skin, her
laugh, her foot, her hand, her touch? _She_ never had a speck of dirt on
her: I tell you her flesh was a perfume. When she embraced me, her arms
folded round me like the wings of angels; and her smile covered me softly
with its light like the sun in heaven. I leave you to laugh at me, or to
cry over me, just as your temper may incline. I am not trying to excuse
myself--I am trying to explain. You are gentle-folks; what dazzled and
maddened _me_, is everyday experience to _you_. Fallen or not, angel or
devil, it came to this--she was a lady; and I was a groom.
Before the house was astir, I got her away (by the workmen's train) to a
large manufacturing town in our parts.
Here--with my savings in money to help her--she could get her outfit of
decent clothes and her lodging among strangers who asked no questions so
long as they were paid. Here--now on one pretense and now on another--I
could visit her, and we could both plan together what our future lives
were to be. I need not tell you that I stood pledged to make her my wife.
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