Maniacs are all about me; I meet them in the halls, the gardens;
sometimes I hear the fiercer sort raving and dashing about their cells.
But I do not feel afraid of them.
It is strange how they all fancy that the rest are mad, and they the
only sane ones. Some of them even go so far as to think that _I_ have
lost my reason. I heard one woman say, not long ago,--"Why, she has
been mad these twenty years! She never was married in her life; but she
believes all these things as if they were really so, and tells them
over to anybody who will listen to her."
Mad these twenty years! So young as I am, too! And I never married, and
all my wrongs a maniac's raving! I was angry at first, and would have
struck her; then I thought, "Poor thing! Why should I care? She does
not know what she is saying."
And I go about, seeing always before me that pallid, horror-stricken
face; and wishing sometimes--oh, how vainly!--that I had listened to
him that bright October day,--that I had been a happy wife, perchance a
happy mother. But no, no! I must not think thus. Once I look at it in
that way, my whole life becomes a terror, a remorse. I will not, must
not, have it so.
Then let me rejoice again, for I have had my revenge,--a great, a
glorious revenge!
* * * * *
LEFT BEHIND.
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