I do not ask you to forgive me--if I had known what I know now I would rather have died than have told you that I loved you, but I do ask you to forget me; or, if you remember me, to think of me as the most wretched and ill-fated of men; as one who is bound hand and foot, and compelled, driven, along a path against his will.

I dare not say any more, dare not tell you what this sacrifice costs me.

Whether you forget or remember me, I shall never forget you for a single instant, shall never cease to look back upon my lost happiness, as a man looks back upon a lost heaven.
"STAFFORD." He read it over a dozen--twenty times, and every time it seemed weaker, meaner, less inexplicable; but he knew that if he destroyed it he could write nothing better, nothing that could satisfy him, though it seemed to him that his heart would have expressed itself more fully it he had written only, "Good-bye! Forget me!" At last, and reluctantly he put it in an envelope and addressed it, and turned it face downwards on his table, so that he might not see the name which had such power to torture his heart.
By the time he had succeeded in writing the letter the dawn was creeping over the hills and casting a pearly light upon the lake; he drew the curtains, and in the weird light caught sight of his face in the mirror: a white and haggard face, which might well have belonged to a man ten years his senior; such a face as would not fail to attract attention and provoke comment by its appearance at the breakfast-table.
He flung himself on the bed, not to sleep, for he knew that that would be impossible, but to get some rest; but rest was as impossible as sleep.

When he closed his eyes Ida's face was near him, her voice was in his ears, inextricably mixed with the slow and languorous tones of Maude Falconer.

He undressed and got into his flannels before Measom came, and went down to the lake for a bath.
He was, as a rule, so moderate in drinking that the wine he had taken, supplemented by his misery, made him feel physically ill.