It would never corrupt, and might even serve to fertilize that simple
heart, which, out of its very simplicity, had made for itself a passing
idol out of what was essentially fake and base, which would have
shortly crumbled to pieces out of its own baseness, had not Fate--or
Providence--with kindly cruel hand forever thrown it down. Still, this
was a grave, and her husband did not know it was there.
Nobody ever had known. The day of delusion had been so short, and
the only relics left of it were those four letters, burnt by herself on her
marriage morning. The whole story, occupying in all only four weeks,
had gone by exactly like a dream, and she had awakened--awakened to
find out what love really was, or what it might have been.
She wept, not loudly, but quietly, till she dared not weep any more. A
sudden thought made her struggle at once for composure, and try to
efface every external trace of tears.
"I am Dr. Grey's wife," she said to herself and resolved that the grand
University magnates should find out nothing in her unworthy of that
name--nothing that could make people say, even the most ill-natured of
them--and, alas! she had lately come to learn that the world is filled,
not, as she thought, with only bad and good, but with an intermediate
race, which is merely ill-natured--say, with a sneer, that Dr.
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