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thinking again, and was only gazing into vacancy.
By and by she turned; her countenance had cleared; the dreamy look was
gone out of her face, all indecision had vanished; the poise of her head
and the firm set of her lips told that her resolution was formed.
She moved toward the table with all the old dignity in her carriage,
and all the old pride in her mien. She took up each letter in its turn,
touched a match to it and watched it slowly consume to ashes. Then she
said:
"I have landed upon a foreign shore, and burned my ships behind me.
These letters were the last thing that held me in sympathy with any
remnant or belonging of the old life. Henceforth that life and all that
appertains to it are as dead to me and as far removed from me as if I
were become a denizen of another world."
She said that love was not for her--the time that it could have satisfied
her heart was gone by and could not return; the opportunity was lost,
nothing could restore it. She said there could be no love without
respect, and she would only despise a man who could content himself with
a thing like her. Love, she said, was a woman's first necessity: love
being forfeited; there was but one thing left that could give a passing
zest to a wasted life, and that was fame, admiration, the applause of the
multitude.
And so her resolution was taken. She would turn to that final resort of
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