I remain

October the 6th, 1892

My dear Mr. Malcon,

Where this letter should find you I don´t know.

I hope, on some far-flung adventure...

I don´t won´t this to cause any alarm, but I've not been entirely honest in my previous letters.

I didn´t wont to worry you. Or perhaps I have lived too long with secrets and have become over reliant on them.

All has not gone well with me here.

I've been low and sedentary, unwilling to go outside...

Sunk into some kind of unhealthy lethargy

Sunk into something like my own sadness.

I Haven´t heard from Mr. Chandeler. He has quite disappeared from our lives, I think...

I feel his absence keenly... its a cutting void.

If  I believed in the old words, I would pray for him. But that's gone for me now.

Perhaps that´s the root of what has been troubling me.

I've left my faith.

Or it has left me.

Thus, my prospects seemed only a long, dark corridor without an end.

I have done things in my life for reasons that seemed right and even moral in their  violent immoprality. And now I stand without that God upon whom I've always depended.

But please,  do not fear for me.

I've no fear, myself.

The old monsters are gone.

The old curses have echoed to silence.

And if my immortal soul is lost to me. something yet remains.

I remain.

So I sign off now with hope and, as ever, with Love

Vanessa