That night I had a little more sleep. The next morning I was strong enough to confront the first and foremost duty that I now owed to myself--the duty of answering my husband's letter.
I wrote to him in these words: "I am still too weak and weary, Eustace, to write to you at any length. But my mind is clear. I have formed my own opinion of you and your letter; and I know what I mean to do now you have left me. Some women, in my situation, might think that you had forfeited all right to their confidence. I don't think that. So I write and tell you what is in my mind in the plainest and fewest words that I can use.
"You say you love me--and you leave me. I don't understand loving a woman and leaving her. For my part, in spite of the hard things you have said and written to me, and in spite of the cruel manner in which you have left me, I love you--and I won't give you up. No! As long as I live I mean to live your wife.
"Does this surprise you? It surprises me. If another woman wrote in this manner to a man who had behaved to her as you have behaved, I should be quite at a loss to account for her conduct. I am quite at a loss to account for my own conduct. I ought to hate you, and yet I can't help loving you. I am ashamed of myself; but so it is.
"You need feel no fear of my attempting to find out where you are, and of my trying to persuade you to return to me. I am not quite foolish enough to do that. You are not in a fit state of mind to return to me. You are all wrong, all over, from head to foot. When you get right again, I am vain enough to think that you will return to me of your own accord. And shall I be weak enough to forgive you? Yes! I shall certainly be weak enough to forgive you.
"But how are you to get right again?
"I have puzzled my brains over this question by night and by day, and my opinion is that you will never get right again unless I help you.
"How am I to help you?
"That question is easily answered. What the Law has failed to do for you, your Wife must do for you. Do you remember what I said when we were together in the back room at Major Fitz-David's house? I told you that the first thought that came to me, when I heard what the Scotch jury had done, was the thought of setting their vile Verdict right. Well! Your letter has fixed this idea more firmly in my mind than ever. The only chance that I can see of winning you back to me, in the character of a penitent and loving husband, is to change that underhand Scotch Verdict of Not Proven into an honest English Verdict of Not Guilty.