"Now I have to send you my last word of good-bye--"
[She had borne up so far; but now she put the pen aside, and bent her
head down on to her hands, and her frame was shaken with her sobbing.
When she resumed, she could scarcely see for the bitter tears that kept
welling her eyes.]
"--and you think, looking at these cold words on the paper, that it was
easy for me to do so. It has not been so easy. I pray God to bless you,
and keep you brave and true and unselfish, and give you happiness in the
success of your work. And I ask a line from you in reply--not sad, but
something that I may look at from time to time, and that will make me
believe you have plenty of interests and hopes in the world, and that
you do not altogether regret that you and I met, and were friends, for a
time.
NATALIE."
This was a strange thing: she took another sheet of paper, and slowly
and with a trembling hand wrote on it these words, "_Your Wife._" That
was all. No doubt it was the signature she had hoped one day to use. She
regarded it long, and earnestly, and sadly, until, indeed, she could not
see it for the tears that rose afresh into her eyes.
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