The Story Continued by Marian Halcombe, in Extracts from Her Diary

“I must submit, Marian, as well as I can,” she said. “My new life has its hard duties, and one of them begins today.” As she spoke she went to a side-table near the window, on which her sketching materials were placed, gathered them together carefully, and put them in a drawer of her cabinet. She locked the drawer and brought the key to me. “I must part from everything that reminds me of him,” she said. “Keep the key wherever you please⁠—I shall never want it again.” Before I could say a word she had turned away to her bookcase, and had taken from it the album that contained Walter Hartright’s drawings. She hesitated for a moment, holding the little volume fondly in her hands⁠—then lifted it to her lips and kissed it. “Oh, Laura! Laura!” I said, not angrily, not reprovingly⁠—with nothing but sorrow in my voice, and nothing but sorrow in my heart. “It is the last time, Marian,” she pleaded. “I am bidding it goodbye forever.” She laid the book on the table and drew out the comb that fastened her hair. It fell, in its matchless beauty, over her back and shoulders, and dropped round her, far below her waist. She separated one long, thin lock from the rest, cut it off, and pinned it carefully, in the form of a circle, on the first blank page of the album. The moment it was fastened she closed the volume hurriedly, and placed it in my hands. “You write to him and he writes to you,” she said. “While I am alive, if he asks after me always tell him I am well, and