before our fellowmen for fear that they should spit in our faces in their loathing of us! Oh God, I have known it all—I have understood it all!"
It was indeed my turn to be silent now. I found myself yet looking at him in incredulity—wordless.
"But that is not the whole of my likeness to thee, Oswald. For, I have endured that cruellest of torments for us—which fell also to thy lot. I believe it to be over now, or soon wholly so to be. But the remembrance of it will not soon pass, even with thy affection to heal my heart. For I too have loved a man, loved him—hiding my passion from him under the coldness of a common friendship. I too have lived side by side, day by day, with him; in terror, lest he should see what he was to me, and so drive me from him. Ah, I have been unhappier, too, than thou, Oswald. For I must needs to watch his heart, as something not merely impossible for me to possess (I would have cast away my soul to possess it!)—but given over to a woman—laid at her feet—with
