MORE extracts from the lady’s journal:

“I can never begin an entry in my journal without having that frightful scene come between me and these pages. Oh, it was terrible,—terrible beyond all comprehension! I cannot believe, after thinking it over and over during these weeks that have passed since it occurred, that it was the fear of death that so terrified me, and, I know, made an old woman of me. No, it could not have been that. It was the fear of going with that awful condemnation upon me. Was it just? Was it true?

“He seems to have recovered at last from the alarming depression that followed his outbreak, and this gives me leisure to think, leisure to recall many circumstances that in my blindness, my incredible blindness and stupidity, I had overlooked. I take into account the fearful strain under which he had suffered so long. He is a delicate, finely organized man, and has had more to do and to bear than a dozen strong men would have done and borne so well and patiently.

“There was his anxiety on the score of my recovery. Then there were the endless duties of waiting on me, of thinking of the thousands of little things that had to be thought of and done, and that he never forgot nor neglected. He has done my cooking, my washing,—everything that was hard and distasteful for a man to do. Then there was his constant anxiety on account of the snow; and it has been growing daily all through the winter with the increasing dangers and discomforts; and besides his anxiety was the hard physical labor—far too heavy for him—that he has been compelled to do in order to keep our hut from being buried and ourselves from being smothered. And, last, there has been the constant wearing upon him of a close imprisonment with me, for whom I know he now must have a most intense dislike.

“I am satisfied, too, that he has anxieties concealed from me. That they are associated with something upon which the back door opens, I have no doubt. There are several reasons for my thinking so. I am so nearly well now that I could get about and be helpful to him if he would only make me a crutch, as I have often begged him to do; but he has always put me off, saying that it was too early for a crutch, that my desire to be useful would give me a serious setback through making me overdo, and that the main thing for us both to consider was the return of my strength as quickly as possible, and our escape on snow-shoes that he would make as soon as I should be able to walk. It has all sounded very plausible, but it seems to me that common-sense would suggest that I take a little exercise. In spite of my having regained my flesh, I am as weak as an infant. Knowing that he is a good physician, I doubt his sincerity about the crutch. I believe the solemn truth is that he fears I would try to invade his cherished secret if I were able to be about.

“I know that he keeps the provisions in the place into which the back door opens, and that this fact seems to give him a sufficient excuse for going there so often,—especially as he does the cooking there; and that is another strange circumstance. For weeks after I was first brought to the hut he prepared the food on the broad hearth here; but after a while he did that in the rear apartment, explaining that the odors from the cooking were not good for me, and that it was uncomfortable for him to cook before an open fireplace. I protested that I did not mind the odors, and he replied that I would at least consider his comfort.

“Another thing: He has not eaten with me for a long, long time. His original plan was to prepare my meal, wait on me until I had finished, and then have his own at the little table in the chimney-corner. I did not observe for some time that he had quit eating in that way, and that he took his meals in the rear apartment. He always speaks of it as an ‘apartment,’ and not as a room. I wonder why. I have been sitting up for a long time now, and do not require his assistance after he has brought me my food. It would be much pleasanter if he would sit at the little table and eat with me. Is his dislike of me so deep that he cannot eat with me? With all my sense, I have permitted this condition of affairs to come about! And we both are sufferers by it.

“It is no wonder, with all these things troubling him, that he has changed so much since I came. He is as scrupulously neat as ever, and he makes this poor little hut shine, but he has changed remarkably since I came. It has been so gradual that I didn’t observe it until my blindness was no longer sufficient to keep me from seeing it. He was slender and evidently not strong when I came, but he has become a shadow, and his gaunt cheeks and hollow eyes are distressing to me. When he comes in now from fighting the snow,—for we must not be buried by it, and must have light and air, and the top of the chimney must be kept clear,—his weakness and exhaustion, though he tries so hard to conceal them, are terrible to see.

“And now a great fear has come to me. It is that at any moment he may break down and die. I wish I had not written that, I wish I had never thought of it. Oh, if my father would only come! What can be keeping him? Do I not know that he loves me better than anything else in the world? Am I not all that he has to love and cling to? I cannot, cannot, understand it. Dr. Malbone says it is unreasonable for me to expect my father, and that if he should make the effort to reach me now it would be at too great a risk to his own life. He tries to assure me that my father will be governed entirely by the advice of the people who know the mountains, and that they will restrain him from making any such attempt, as they would not dare to make it themselves. All that may be true, but it is difficult for me to believe it. If I could only get a word from him, it would give me greater strength to bear the horrors of my situation. But why should I complain, when Dr. Malbone bears it all so patiently, so sweetly, so cheerfully?

“Still, that awful picture of murder comes between me and these pages unceasingly. I think I can understand now why men sometimes kill women. Why should men and women be so different? Why should it be impossible for them to comprehend each other? It was Murder that I saw standing before me—both the horrible picture of murder as he painted it, with me as the murderess—me as the murderess!—and Murder in the flesh as he stood ready to strangle me. Oh, the incredible ferocity of the man, the terrible, wild savagery of him, the awful dark and nether side of his strangely complex character! All along I had taken him for a pusillanimous milksop, a baby, an old woman, a weak nobody; and at once he dropped his outer shell and stood forth a Man,—terrible, savage, brutal, overwhelming, splendid, wonderful! What is my judgment worth after this? And I was so proud of my understanding of men!

“Why didn’t he kill me? It was my cry that checked him; but why should it? Was it my appeal for help that brought him to his senses? I think so. It touched that within him which had been so keenly alert, so unrelaxingly vigilant, ever since I had come under his care. But what did he mean by the howl of the she-wolf? And what did he mean by saying that the wolves had come down? Several times since that terrible scene he has waked me in the night with groans, and with crying out in his sleep, ‘The she-wolf?’ These things have a meaning, I know. Why does he explain nothing? And why have I permitted an estrangement between us that makes it impossible for me to seek his confidence? Is it too late now?

“Oh, the terrible moments, the interminable hours, that passed after he had left the hut by the rear door! Every second, at first, I expected him to return and kill me. Would he have a rifle, a revolver, a knife, or a bludgeon, or would he come with those terrible long fingers hooked like claws to fasten upon my throat? And yet, somehow, I felt safe; I felt that his old watchfulness and solicitude had returned.

“As soon as I could overcome the half-stupor into which his outburst had thrown me I dragged myself to the rear door, intending to barricade it against him. The effort was exceedingly painful and exhausting, and brought me great suffering for a week afterward. But my sufferings of mind and spirit were so much greater that I could bear those of the flesh. When I had crawled to the door and was trying to drag a box against it, I heard something that stopped me. I am not certain that it was anything real. There was a loud singing in my ears from the awful fright that I had suffered, and what I heard may have been that, made seemingly coherent by my over-strained imagination. What I heard sounded like the distant, smothered, awful strains of Saint-Saens’s ‘Dance of Death’ played on the violin. But wild and terrible as it sounded, it came as a pledge of my safety. Murder cannot come with music.

“I drew myself away and with great effort clambered upon the bed, where I lay a long time in complete exhaustion. Time had no meaning for me. A dull, massive, intangible weight seemed to be crushing me, and I longed—oh, how I longed!—for human sympathy.

“The hut was dark when he returned. We had been very saving with the candles, for Dr. Malbone explained that they were running low; so in the evenings we generally had only the fire-light. There seemed to be a generous supply of fire-wood in the rear apartment, and some of it was a pitchy pine that gave out a fine blaze. When he returned the fire had burned out. I felt no fear when I heard him enter. I knew by the unsteadiness of his movements that he was weak and ill, but the first sound of his voice as he called me anxiously was perfectly reassuring.

“‘I am lying on the bed,’ I answered.

“He groped to the bedside and there he knelt, and buried his face in his hands upon the coverlet. And then—I say it merely as his due, merely as the simple truth—he did the manliest thing that a man ever did. He raised his head and in dignified humility said,—

“‘I have done the most cowardly, the most brutal thing that a man can do. Will you forgive me? Can you forgive me?

“I put out my hand to stop him, for it was terrible that a man should be so humble and broken; but he took my hand in both of his and held it.

“‘Will you? Can you? he pleaded.

“It was the only time that his touch had been other than the cold and perfunctory one of the physician, and—I feel no shame in writing it—it was the first time in my life that the touch of a man’s hand had been so comforting. For a moment his hand seemed to have been thrust through the wall that hitherto had separated us so completely.

“‘You were not the one to blame,’ I said. ‘I alone was the guilty one.’

“‘No, no!’ he protested, warmly. ‘What provocation under heaven could excuse such conduct as mine?’

“‘I will forgive you,’ I said, ‘upon one condition.’

“‘And that———-’

“‘You forgive me in turn.’

“Very slowly, as soon as I had said that, the pressure with which he had been holding my hand began to relax. What did that mean, and why did he remain silent, and why did a pain come stealing into my heart? Could not he be as generous as I? Had I overrated him, after all?

“‘It was terrible!’ he half whispered. ‘By every obligation resting upon a man, I should have been kind to you. You were my guest as well as my patient. You were crippled and helpless, and unable to defend yourself. You were a woman, looking to every man, by the right of your sex, for comfort and protection. I was a man, owing to you, because you were a woman, all the comfort and protection that every man owes to every woman. All of these obligations I trampled under foot.’

“Why did he put that sting into our reconciliation? Had he not done it so innocently, so unintentionally, it would not have hurt so much. I withdrew my hand from his very slowly; he made no effort to retain it. He did not again ask me to forgive him, and he did not offer me his forgiveness. The breach in the wall was closed, and the barrier stood intact and impregnable between us.

“Presently he rose and made a fire, and prepared me something to eat; but I had no appetite. Then he found that I had a fever, and he was much distressed. There was just one comforting touch of sympathy when he said to me,—

“‘You were sobbing all the time I was making the fire and preparing your supper. I promise not to frighten nor distress you again.’

“How did he know I had been sobbing, when I had taken so much pains to conceal it And yet I might have known that his watchfulness upon my welfare is so keen, so unrelaxing, that nothing affecting me can be hidden from him.

“I was confined to bed a week, and suffered greatly both in mind and body. I had hurt my crippled leg, and that made my physician very anxious. During all this time it had not occurred to me, so sodden with selfishness is my nature, that he had suffered a very serious nervous shock from his outburst of mad passion, and that only by a mighty effort was he holding up to put me again on the road to recovery. A realization of the truth came when my ill turn had passed. He had hardly placed me comfortably on a chair when a ghastly pallor made a death’s-head of his face, and he reeled to the bed and fell fainting upon it, still having the thoughtfulness to say, as he reeled,—

“‘I am—a little—tired—and sleepy. I—am perfectly—well. Have no—uneasiness.’

“Except for his slight, short breathing, he lay for hours as one dead; and then I realized more fully than ever the weight of the awful burden that my presence has laid upon him. I know that I am killing him. O God! is there nothing that I can do to help him, to make it easier for him? What have I done that this horrible curse should have come upon me?

“The most wonderful of all the strange things that I have seen and learned in this terrible imprisonment is that his kindness toward me has not suffered the slightest change. He is still the soul of thoughtfulness, watchfulness, unselfishness, and yet he has denounced me to my face as a——

“Another thing I have found: All the training that I have had in cleverness goes for nothing here. He always avoids the beginning of any conversation on subjects other than those that lie immediately near us. It therefore requires a great effort on my part—and I think I deserve some praise for it—to draw him into discussions of general matters. In these discussions he never advances an opinion if he suspects that I have an opposite one, and never opposes nor contradicts me; but I cannot help feeling that his views are so much broader and deeper than mine, so much wiser, so much more charitable, so much nearer to what he calls ‘the great heart of humanity,’ as to make me seem shallow and mean. Am I really so? I try not to be.

“With indescribable tact and delicacy, he holds me at an infinite distance, and I have been unable to find any way to bridge the vast gulf.... After all, why should I try? If he despises me, I cannot help it. This miserable position in which I am placed will be at an end some time; and when I am again free, and in my own world, I will show him the gratitude that I feel. Will he let me?...

“What is there so repulsive about me? Why should I be treated as a viper? And why is it that of all the men I have known—men whom I could handle as putty—this obscure backwoods doctor sets himself wholly apart from me, remains utterly impregnable, shames and humiliates me with a veiled pity, and feels not the slightest touch of the power that I know myself to have? Is my face ugly? Are my manners crude? Is my voice repellent? Where are my resources of womanly tact that I have used successfully in the past? Why is it that I fail utterly to impress him as having a single admirable trait, a single grace of appearance, manner, or character?

“It is hard to bear all this. I try to be brave and strong and cheerful, as he always is; but it is human nature to resent his treatment, and it is cruel of him to keep me in such a position. It is the first time in my life that I have been at a disadvantage.

“I imagine that he has suffered some great sorrow. Indeed, he said so in his outburst. His distrust of me seems to indicate its character. He probably gave some heartless woman his whole love, his whole soul, and she laughed at him and cast him off. That would go hard with a man of his kind. There can be no other explanation; and now I am the sufferer for that woman’s sin: he thinks that all women are like her.

“I will write this vow, so that I may turn to it often and strengthen my purpose by reading it:

“I will make this man like me. I will tear down the wall that he has built between us. I will employ every resource to bring him to my feet. I will make him appreciate me. I will make him need me. I will make him want me.

“That is my vow.”

Thus end, again for the present, these extracts from the lady’s journal.