Not hers, alas! the joyful pride, the full content, of a heart which is conscious in its sweetest depths that it gives as much as it receives.
This was all.

She had done nothing wrong, nothing unworthy of either herself or Dr.Grey; nothing but what hundreds of women do every day, and neither blame themselves nor are blamed by others.

She had but suffered a new footstep to enter her young life's garden, without having had the courage to say of one little corner in it, "Do not tread there, it is a grave." Only a grave; a very harmless grave now, tricked with innocent, girlish flowers, but still containing the merest handful of dust.
It would never corrupt, and might even serve to fertilize that simple heart, which, out of its very simplicity, had made for itself a passing idol out of what was essentially fake and base, which would have shortly crumbled to pieces out of its own baseness, had not Fate--or Providence--with kindly cruel hand forever thrown it down.

Still, this was a grave, and her husband did not know it was there.
Nobody ever had known.

The day of delusion had been so short, and the only relics left of it were those four letters, burnt by herself on her marriage morning.