We were married in London, and when the final arrangements were being discussed, I asked her where she would like to go after the ceremony.

"Oh, let us go home, Don," she said—she insisted on calling me "Don." I told her the name conveyed no idea to me, but she answered that I was obtuse, and she was sure I should grow to love it in time, even if I did not understand it, if it were only because it was fetish, and nobody could use it but herself; to which extent, by the way, I was very soon able to endorse her opinion. "Don't let us go to nasty foreign hotels. I hate travelling, and I hate sight-seeing—the kind of sight-seeing one does for the sake of seeing. We will go home and be happy. No place could be half so beautiful to me as yours is now."

That she should call it "home" at once, and long to be settled there, was a good omen, I thought. But she was happy, beyond all possibility of a doubt, in the anticipation of her life with me.

Soon after our return I took her into Morningquest, and left her to lunch with her aunt, Mrs. Orton Beg. I had business on the other side of the city which detained me for some hours, and when at last I could get away, I hurried back, being naturally impatient to rejoin her. Mrs, Orton Beg was alone in the drawing room, and I suppose something in the expression of my face amused her, for she laughed, and answered a question I had not asked.

"Out there," she said, meaning in the garden.

I turned and looked through the open French window, and instantly that haunting ghost of an indefinite recollection was laid. Evadne was sleeping in a high-backed chair, with the creeper-curtained old brick wall for a background, and half her face concealed by a large summer hat which she held in her hand.

"I thought you would remember when you saw her so," said Mrs. Orton Beg. "It was just after that unhappy marriage fiasco. She had run away, and sought an asylum here, and when you were so struck by her appearance, I could not help thinking it was a thousand pities that you had not met before it was too late."

"And then you asked me to use the Scottish gift of second sight—I was thinking at the moment that she was the kind of girlie I should choose for a wife, and so I said she should marry a man called George—"

"Which made it doubly a Delphic oracle for vagueness to me," said Mrs.
Orton Beg, "because Colonel Colquhoun's name was also George."

"Now, this is a singular coincidence!" I exclaimed.

"Ah!" she ejaculated. "But I do not talk of 'coincidences'—there is a special providence, you know."

"Which deserts Edith and protects Evadne?"

"You are incorrigible!"

"You are a demon worshipper! The Infinite Good gives us the knowledge and power if we will use it. Evadne was a Seventh Wave!"

"'The Seventh Waves of humanity must suffer,' you said." We looked at each other. "The oracle was ominous. But surely she has suffered enough? Heaven grant her happiness at last!"

"Amen," I answered fervently.

As soon as we were settled, I tried to order her life so as to take her mind completely out of the old groove. I kept her constantly out of doors, and never let her sit and sew alone, for one thing, or lounge in easy chairs, or do anything else that is enervating.

I made her ride, too, and rise regularly in the morning; not too early, for that is as injurious in one way as too late is in another; the latter enervates, but the former exhausts. Regularity is the best discipline. I taught her also to shoot at a mark, and took her into the coverts in the autumn; but she could not bear the sight of suffering creatures, and unfortunately she wounded a bird the first time we were out, and I was never able to persuade her to shoot at another. However, there was active exercise enough for her without that, so long as she was able to take it, and when it became necessary to curtail the amount, she drove both morning and afternoon, and took short walks and pottered about the grounds in between times.

I had bought As-You-Like-It while she was abroad with the Hamilton-Wellses, and had had the whole place pulled down, and the site converted into a plantation, so that no trace was left of that episode to vex her. In fact, I had done all that I could think of as likely in any way to help to re-establish her health, and certainly she was very happy. Everything I wished her to do seemed to be a pleasure to her; and mind and body grew rapidly so vigorous that I lost all fear for her. She said she was a new creature, and she looked it.

When we had been married about a year, Sir Shadwell Rock came to pay us a visit. Evadne was quite at her best then, and I introduced her to him triumphantly.

He asked about her progress with kindly interest when we were alone together, and declared heartily that she was certainly to all appearance thoroughly restored, that he was quite in love with her himself, and hoped to see her in the van of the new movement yet.

She took to the dear old man, and told him his great reputation did not frighten her one bit; and she would lean on his arm familiarly out in the grounds, pelt him with gorse blossom, fill his pockets with rose leaves surreptitiously, till they bulged out like bags behind, and keep him smiling perpetually at her pretty ways. He had been going abroad for a holiday, but we persuaded him to stay with us instead, and when we parted with him at last reluctantly, he declared that Evadne had made him young again, and the wrinkles were all smoothed out.

His last words to me were: "So far so good, Galbraith," and I knew he meant to warn as well as to congratulate. "Don't keep her in cotton wool too much. Make her face sickness and suffering while she is well herself. Take warning by the small-pox epidemic. She has no morbid horror of that subject, because she knows practically how much can be done for the sufferers. If she devote herself to good works, she will be sanguine because so much is being accomplished, instead of dwelling despondently on the hopeless amount there is still to do."

Soon after this, however, I began to hope that a new interest in life was coming to cure her of all morbid moods for ever. I was anxious at first, but she was so quietly happy in the prospect herself, and she continued so well in spite of the drain upon her strength, that I soon took heart again.

"You have got to be very young, Don, since I was so good as to marry you," she said to me one day.

She had come in with some flowers for me, and had caught me whistling instead of working.

Sir Shadwell had consented, in his usual kind and generous way, to share the responsibility of this time with me. He came down to us for an occasional "week-end," just to see how she progressed, and his observations, like my own, continued to be satisfactory. It was a crucial test, we knew. If we could carry her safely through this trying time, she would be able to take her proper place with the best of her sex in the battle of life, to fight with them and for them, which was what we both ardently desired to see her do.

There had been never a word of the mental malady since Colquhoun's death. I had judged it well to let her forget she had ever suffered so if she could, and I had no reason to suspect that she ever thought of it. She had had hours, and even days, of depression since our marriage, but had always been able to account for them satisfactorily; and now, although of course she got down at times, she was less often so than is usually the case under the circumstances, and was always easily consoled.

She paid me a visit in my study one day. She had a habit of coming occasionally when I was at work, a habit that happily emphasized the difference between my solitary bachelor days and these. She was shy of her caresses as a rule, but would occasionally make my knee her seat, if it happened to suit her convenience, while she filled the flower vases on my table; or she would stand behind me with her hands clasped round my neck, and lean her cheek against my hair. She did so now.

"You love your work, Don, don't you?" she said.

"Yes, sweetheart," I answered; "next to you, it is the great delight of my life."

"But, Don, you find it all-absorbing; don't you?"

"No, not all-absorbing, now."

"But sufficiently so to be a comfort to you if you ever had any great grief? After the first shock, you would return to your old pursuits, would you not? And, by and by, you would find solace in them?"

I unclasped her hands from my neck, and drew her round to me. There was a new note in her voice that sounded ominous.

"What is the trouble, little woman!" I whispered, when I had her safe in my arms.

"I don't think I could die and leave you, Don, if I thought you would be miserable."

"Well, then, don't allow yourself to entertain any doubt on the subject," I answered; "for I should be more than 'miserable.' I should never care for anything in the world again."

"But if I should have to die—"

"There is no need to distress either yourself or me by such an idle supposition, Evadne," I answered. "There is not the slightest occasion for alarm."

"I am not alarmed," she said, and then she was silent.

A few days later, I found her sitting on the floor in the library, reading a book she had taken from one of the lower shelves. It was a book of Sir Shadwell Rock's on the heredity of vice. I took it from her gently, remarking as I did so: "I would rather you did not read these things just now, Evadne."

"I suppose you agree with Sir Shadwell Rock," she said.

"Let me help you up," I answered.

"Do you?" she persisted.

"Of course. He is our chief authority," I answered. "But promise me, Evadne, not to look at any of those books again without consulting me. I shall be having you like the medical students who imagine they have symptoms of every disease they study."

"It would mark a strange change in my mind," she answered; "for I used to be able to study any subject of the kind without being affected in that way."

That her mind had changed, alas! or rather, that it had been injured by friction and pressure of the restrictions imposed upon it, was the suspicion which necessitated my present precaution, but I could not say so.

She held out her hands for me to help her to rise. "Why are women kept in the dark about these things?" she said, pointing to the books on heredity. "Why are we never taught as you are? We are the people to be informed."

"You are quite right," I said. "It is criminal to vithhold knowledge from any woman who has the capacity to acquire it. But there is a time for everything, you know, my sweetheart."

"Now, that poor Colonel Colquhoun," she went on as if I had not spoken. "He for one should never have been born. With his ancestry, he must have come into the world foredoomed to a life of dissipation and disease. It is awful to think we may any of us become the parents of people who can't be moral without upsetting the whole natural order of the universe. O Don! it is dreadful to know it, but it is sinful to be ignorant of the fact."

"But there is no fear for our children, Evadne," I said. "Ah! that is what
I want to know!" she exclaimed, clasping her hands round my arm.

"Come out into the grounds then, sweetheart," I answered, affecting a cheerfulness I was far from feeling; "and I will tell you the whole family history."

I had to go out that evening to see a serious case in consultation with a brother practitioner. I had ordered the dogcart for ten o'clock, and Evadne came out into the hall with me from the drawing room, where I had been reading to her since dinner, when it was brought round.

"Must you go?" she said listlessly.

"I am afraid I must," I answered; "it is a matter of life and death. But why shouldn't you come too! It will be much better than staying here alone. I ought to have thought of it sooner. Do come! I will send the dogcart back, and have the brougham."

"It would delay you," she said, hesitating.

"Oh, no! Two horses in the brougham will get over the ground faster than one in the dogcart. Come! Let me get you some wraps."

"But when we arrive, my presence will be an inconvenience," she objected.

"In no way," I answered. "It will not be a long business, and you can wait very well in the carriage with a book and a lamp."

She came out and looked at the night, still undecided. The weather was damp and uninviting.

"I don't think I'll go, Don," she said, shivering. "Good-bye and safe home to you!"

As I drove along, I cast about in my own mind for a suitable companion for Evadne, someone who would vary the monotony for her when I had to be out. She had no ladyloves, as so many women have. Mrs. Orton Beg was at Fraylingay again, and Lady Adeline was the only other friend I knew of who would be congenial just then; but she had multifarious duties of her own to attend to, and it would not have been fair to ask her, especially as she was sure to come if she knew she was wanted, however great the inconvenience to herself. I knew nothing at that time of two other friends of Evadne's, Mrs. Sillinger and Mrs. Malcomson, to whom I afterward learnt that she was much attached. Owing, I think, to the unnatural habit of reticence which had been forced upon her, she had not mentioned them to me, although she continued to correspond with them. It took her some time to realize that every interest of hers was matter of moment to me. A certain colonel and Mrs. Guthrie Brimston had recently settled in the neighbourhood, in order, as they gave out, to be near the Morningquest family, with whom they claimed relationship, on the ground, I believe, that they also were Guthries. Colonel Guthrie Brimston led people to suppose that he had left the service entirely on the duke's account, his disinterested intention being to vary the monotony for the poor old gentleman during his declining years. They had claimed Evadne's acquaintance with effusion, but she had not responded very cordially.

"Let them have a carriage and horses whenever they like, Don," she said, "and give them plenty to eat; but don't otherwise encourage them to come here."

Recollecting which, I now inferred that Mrs. Guthrie Brimston would not answer my present purpose at all.

This was the first time Evadne had shown any objection to being left alone. She used to insist upon my going away sometimes, because, she said, I should be so very glad to come back to her! But she was never exacting in any way, and never out of temper. And she had such pretty ways as a wife! little endearing womanly ways which one felt to be the spontaneous outcome of tenderness untold, and inexpressible. It was strange how her presence pervaded the house; strange to me that one little body could make such a difference.

Foolishly fond if you like. But if every man could care as much for a woman, hallowed would be her name, and the strife-begetting uncertainties of heaven and hell would be allowed to lapse in order to make room for healthy human happiness. Our hearts have been starved upon fables long enough; we demand some certainty; and as knowledge increases, waging its inexorable war of extermination against evil, our beautiful old earth will be allowed to be lovable, and life a blessing, and death itself only a last sweet sleep, neither to be sought nor shunned—"The soothing sinking down on hard-earned holy rest," from which, if we arise again, it shall not be to suffer. No life could be fuller of promise than mine at this moment. Nothing was wanting but the patter of little feet about the house, and they were coming. Doubts and fears were latent for once. My hopes were limitless, my content was extreme.

"May you have quiet rest to-night, my darling; may your heart grow strong, and your faith in man revive at last."

About halfway to my destination, I met the gentleman who had asked me out in consultation, returning. He was on his way to my house to tell me that the patient was dead. My presence could therefore be of no avail, and I turned back also. I had not been absent more than an hour, but I found, on entering the house, that Evadne had already retired. It was a good sign, I thought, as she had been rather fidgety the whole day. I had some letters to write, and went at once to my study for the purpose, taking a candle with me from the hall. The servants, not expecting me back until late, had turned out most of the lights downstairs. The lamp in my study, however, was still burning. It stood on the writing table, and the first thing I saw, on entering the room, was a letter lying conspicuously on the blotting pad. It was from Evadne to me.

She had evidently intended me to get it in the morning, for a tray was always left for me in the dining room in case I should be hungry when I came in late, and my chances were all against my going to the study again that night. I put my candle down, and tore the note open with trembling hands. The first few lines were enough. "I am haunted by a terrible fear," she wrote. "I have tried again and again to tell you, but I never could. You would not see that it is prophetic, as I do—in case of our death—nothing to save my daughter from Edith's fate—better both die at once." So I gathered the contents. No time to read. I crumpled the note into my pocket. My labouring breath impeded my progress a moment, but, thank Heaven! I was not paralyzed. Involuntarily I glanced at my laboratory. It was an inner room, kept locked as a rule, but the door was open now—as I knew I had expected it to be. I seized the candle and went to the shelf where I kept the bottles with the ominous red labels. One was missing.

"Evadne!" I shouted, running back through the study and library into the hall, and calling her again and again as I went. If it were not already too late, and she had heard my voice, I knew she would hesitate. I tore up the stairs, and I must have flown, although it seemed a century before I reached her room. I flung open the door.

She had heard me.

She was standing beside a dressing table in a listening attitude, with a glass half raised to her lips, and her eyes met mine as I entered.

My first cry of distress had reached her, and the shock of it had been sufficient. Had that note fallen into my hands but one moment later—but I cannot bear to think of it. Even at this distance of time the recollection utterly unmans me. The moment I saw her, however, I could command myself. I took the glass from her hand, and threw it into the fireplace with as little show of haste as possible.

"To bed now, my sweetheart," I said; "and no more nonsense of this kind, you know."

She looked at the fragments of the broken glass, and then at me, in a half wondering, half regretful, half inquiring way that was pitiful to see. Shaken as I was, I could not bear it. While the danger lasted, it was no effort to be calm; but now I broke down, and, throwing myself into a chair, covered my face with my hands, thoroughly overcome.

In a moment she was kneeling beside me.

"O Don!" she exclaimed, "what is it? Why are you so terribly upset?"

Poor little innocent sinner! The one idea had possessed her to the exclusion of every other consideration. I said nothing to her, of course, in the way of blame. It would have been useless. She was bitterly sorry to see me grieved; but her moral consciousness was suspended, and she felt no remorse whatever for her intention, except in so far as it had given me pain. The impulse had passed for the moment, however, and I was so sure of it that I did not even take the fatal phial away with me when I went to my dressing room; but for forty-six days and nights I never left her an hour alone. The one great hope, however, that the cruel obliquity would be cured by the mother's love when it awoke amply sustained me.

She was well and cheerful for the rest of the time, greatly owing, I am sure, to the influence of Sir Shadwell Rock, who came at once, like the kind and generous friend he was, without waiting to be asked, when he heard what had happened; and announced himself prepared to stay until the danger was over. I heard Evadne laugh very soon after his arrival, and could see that "the worry in her head," as she described it, had gone again, and was forgotten. The impulse, which would have robbed me of all my happiness and hopes had she succeeded in carrying it out, never cost her a thought. The saving suffering of an agony of remorse was what we should like to have seen, for in that there would have been good assurance of healthy moral consciousness restored.

It seemed to be only the power to endure mental misery which had been injured by those weary days of enforced seclusion and unnatural inactivity, for I never knew anyone braver about physical pain. It was the strength to contemplate the sufferings of others, which grows in action and is best developed by turning the knowledge to account for their benefit, that had been sapped by ineffectual brooding, until at last, before the moral shock of indignation which the view of preventable human evils gave her, her right mind simply went out, and a disordered faculty filled the void with projects which only a perverted imagination could contemplate as being of any avail.

Whatever doubts we may have had about her feeling for the child when it came were instantly set at rest. Nothing could have been healthier or more natural than her pride and delight in him. When she saw him for the first time, after he was dressed, I brought him to her myself with his little cheek against my face.

"O Don!" she exclaimed, her eyes opening wide with joy. "I love to see you like that! But what is she like, Don? Give her to me!"

"She, indeed!" I answered. "Don't insult my son. He would reproach you himself, but he is speechless with indignation."

"O Don, don't be ridiculous!" she cried, stretching up her arms for him. "Is it really a boy? Do give him to me! I want to see him so!" When I had put him in her arms, she gathered him up jealously, and covered him with kisses, then held him off a little way to look at him, and then kissed him again and again.

"Did you ever see a baby before?" I asked her.

"No, never! never!" she answered emphatically; "never such a darling as this, at all events! His little cheek is just like velvet; and, see! he can curl up his hands! Isn't it wonderful, Don? He's like you, too. I'm sure he is. He's quite dark."

"He's just the colour of that last sunset you were raving about. I told you to be careful."

"O Don, how can you!" she exclaimed. It was beautiful to see her raptures. She was like a child herself, so unaffectedly glad in her precious little treasure, and so surprised! The fact that he would move independently and have ideas of his own seemed never to have occurred to her.

So far so good, as Sir Shadwell said; and we soon had her about again; but the first time she sat up, after her cushions had been arranged for her, and her baby laid on her lap, when I stooped to give them both a kiss of hearty congratulation, she burst into tears.

"It is nothing, Don, don't be concerned," she said, trying bravely to smile again. "I was thinking of my mother. This would have been such a happy day for her."

This made me think of the breach with her father. I had forgotten that she had a father, but it occurred to me now that a reconciliation might add to her happiness, and I wrote to him accordingly to that effect, making the little grandson my excuse. Mr. Frayling replied that he had heard indirectly of his daughter's second marriage, but was not surprised to receive no communication from herself on the subject, because her whole conduct for many years past had really been most extraordinary. If, however, she had become a dutiful wife at last, as I had intimated, he was willing to forgive her, and let bygones be bygones: whereupon I asked him to Fountain Towers, and he came.

He was extremely cordial. I had a long talk with him before he saw Evadne, during which I discovered from whence she took her trick of phrase-making. He expressed himself as satisfied with me, and my position, my reputation, and my place. He also shook his watch chain at my son, which denoted great approval, I inferred; and made many improving remarks, interspersed with much good advice on the subject of babies and the management of estates.

Evadne had been very nervous about meeting him again, but the baby broke the ice, and she was unfeignedly glad to make friends. Upon the whole, however, the reconciliation was not the success that I had anticipated. Father and daughter had lost touch, and, after the first few hours, there was neither pleasure nor pain in their intercourse; nothing, in fact, but politeness. The flow of affection had been too long interrupted. It was diverted to other channels now, and was too deeply imbedded in them to be coaxed back in the old direction. Love is a sacred stream which withdraws itself from the sacrilegious who have offered it outrage.

It was an unmitigated happiness, however, to Evadne to have her brothers and sisters with her again, and from that time forward we bad generally some of them at Fountain Towers.

Mrs. Kilroy of Ilverthorpe, otherwise known to her friends as Angelica, was one of the first people privileged to see the baby.

"Oh, you queer little thing!" she exclaimed, pointing her finger at it by way of caress. "I've been thinking all this time that babies were always Speckled Toads. And you are all rosy, and dimpled, and plump, you pretty thing! I wish I had just a dozen like you!"

Poor erratic Angelica, with all her waywardness, "but yet a woman!" There was only the one man that I have ever known who could have developed the best that was in Angelica, and him she had just missed, as so often happens in this world of contraries. I am thinking of our poor Julian, known to her as the Tenor, whom she had met when it was too late, and in an evil hour for us and for herself apparently, the consequences having been his death and her own desolation. Yet I don't know. Those were the first consequences certainly, but others followed and are following. The memory of one good man is a light which sheds the brightest rays that fall on the lives of thousands—as Mr. Kilroy has reason to know; with whom, after the Tenor, Angelica is happier than she could have been with any other man. And then, again, she has Diavolo. The close friendship between them, which had been interrupted for some years, was renewed again in some inexplicable way by the effect of my marriage on Diavolo, and since then they have been as inseparable as their respective duties to husband and grandfather allow. And so the web of life is woven, the puzzling strands resolving themselves out of what has seemed to be a hopeless tangle into the most beautiful designs.

Some of Evadne's ideas of life were considerably enlarged in view of the boy's future.

"I am so glad you are a rich man," she said to me one day, "and have a title and all that. It doesn't matter for you, you know, Don, because you are you. But it will give the baby such a start in life."

She summoned me at a very early period of his existence to choose a name for him, and having decided upon George Shadwell Beton, she had him christened with all orthodox ceremony by the Bishop of Morningquest as soon as possible. That duty once accomplished must have relieved her mind satisfactorily with regard to a Christian name for him, for she has insisted on calling him by the heathen appellation of Donino ever since, for the flattering reason that his temper when thwarted is exactly like mine.

"I am sure when you were his age you used to kick and scream just as he does when his wishes are not carried out on the instant," she said. "You don't kick and scream now when you are vexed; you look like thunder, and walk out of the room."

"Baby seems to afford you infinite satisfaction when he kicks and screams. You laugh and hug him more, if anything, in his tantrums than when he is good," I remarked.

"I take his tantrums for a sign of strength," she answered. "He is merely standing on his dignity, and demanding his rights as a rule. It was the same thing with his father when he frowned and walked out of the room. He wouldn't be sat upon either, and I used to see in that a sign of self-respect also. It is a long time now since I saw you frown and walk out of the room, Don."

"It is a long time since you attempted to sit upon me," I said.

"I am afraid I neglect you," she answered apologetically; "you see, Donino requires so much of my time."

She continued to be cheerful for months after the birth of the boy, and we waited patiently for some sign which should be an assurance of her complete restoration to mental health; or, so far as I was concerned, for an opportunity of testing her present feeling about the subject that distressed her. I had given up expecting a miraculous cure in a moment, and now only hoped for a gradual change for the better.

The opportunity I was waiting for came one winter's afternoon when she was playing with the baby. It was a moment of leisure with me, the afternoon tea-time, which I always arranged to spend with her if possible, and especially if she would otherwise have been alone, as was the case on this occasion.

I had been responding for half an hour, as well as I could, to incessant appeals for sympathy and admiration—not that I found it difficult to admire the boy, who was certainly a splendid specimen of the human race, although perhaps I ought not to say so; but my command of language never answered his mother's expectations, somehow, when it came to expressing my feelings.

"Do you think you care as much for him as I do, Don?" she burst out at last.

"More," I answered seriously.

"Why? How?" she demanded, surprised by my tone.

"Because I never could have hurt him."

"Hurt him!" she exclaimed, gathering him up in her arms. "Do you mean that I could hurt him! hurt my baby! Oh!" She got up and stood looking at me indignantly for a few seconds with the child's face hidden against her neck; and then she rang the bell sharply, and sent him away.

"What do you mean, Don?" she said, when we were alone together again.
"Tell me? You would not say a cruel thing like that for nothing."

"I am referring to that night before he was born," I said, taking the little bottle from my pocket. This seems to me to have been the cruellest operation that I have ever had to perform.

"O Don!" she cried, greatly distressed. "I understand I should have killed him. But why, why do you remind me of that now?"

"I want to be quite sure that you have learnt what a mistaken notion that was, and that you regret the impulse."

She sat down on a low chair before the fire, with her elbows on her knees and her face buried in her hands, and remained so for some time. She wanted to think it out, and tell me exactly.

"I do not feel any regret," she said at last. "I would not do the same thing now, but it is only because I am not now occupied with the same thoughts. They have fallen into the background of my consciousness, and I no longer perceive the utility of self-sacrifice."

"But do you not perceive the sin of suicide?"

"Not of that kind of suicide," she answered. "You see, we have the divine example. Christ committed suicide to all intents and purposes by deliberately putting himself into the hands of his executioners; but his motive makes them responsible for the crime; and my motive would place society in a similar position."

"Your view of the great sacrifice would startle theologians, I imagine," was my answer. "But, even allowing that Christ was morally responsible for his own death, and thereby set the example you would have followed to save others from suffering; tell me, do you really see any comparison between an act which had the redemption of the world for its object and the only result that could follow from, the sacrifice of one little mother and child?"

"What result, Don?"

"Breaking your husband's heart, spoiling his life, and leaving him lonely forever."

She started up and threw herself on her knees beside me, clasping her hands about my neck.

"O Don, don't say that again!" she cried, "Don't say anything like that again—ever—will you?"

"You know I should never think of it again if I could be sure—"

She hid her head upon my shoulder, but did not answer immediately.

"I am seeking for some assurance in myself to give you," she said at last; "but I feel none. The same train of thought would provoke me again—no, not to the same act, but to something desperate; I can't tell what. But I suffer so, Don, when such thoughts come, from grief, and rage, and horror, I would do almost anything for relief."

"But just think—" I began,

"No, don't ask me to think!" she interrupted. "All my endeavour is not to think. Let me live on the surface of life, as most women do. I will do nothing but attend to my household duties and the social duties of my position. I will read nothing that is not first weeded by you of every painful thought that might remind me. I will play with my baby by day, and curl up comfortably beside you at night, infinitely grateful and content to be so happily circumstanced myself—Don, help me to that kind of life, will you? And burn the books. Let me deserve my name and be 'well pleasing one' to you first of all the world, and then to any with whom I may come in contact. Let me live while you live, and die when you die. But do not ask me to think. I can be the most docile, the most obedient, the most loving of women as long as I forget my knowledge of life; but the moment I remember I become a raging fury; I have no patience with slow processes; 'Revolution' would be my cry, and I could preside with an awful joy at the execution of those who are making the misery now for succeeding generations."

"But, my dear child, it would surely be happier for you to try to alleviate—"

"No, no," she again interrupted. "I know all you can say on that score; but I cannot bear to be brought into contact with certain forms of suffering. I cannot bear the contradictions of life; they make me rage."

"What I want to say is that you should act, and not think," I ventured.

"How can I act without thinking?" she asked.

"You see, if you don't act you must think," I pursued; "and if you do think without acting, you become morbid. The conditions of an educated woman's life now force her to know the world. She is too intelligent not to reason about what she knows. She sees what is wrong; and if she is high-minded she feels forced to use her influence to combat it. If she resists the impulse her conscience cannot acquit her, and she suffers herself for her cowardice."

"I know," she answered. "But don't let us discuss the subject any more."

We were silent for some time after that, and then I made a move as if to speak, but checked myself.

"What is it?" she asked.

"I was going to ask you to do something to oblige me; but now I do not like to."

"Oh!" she exclaimed, much hurt; "do you really think there is anything I would not do for you, if I could?"

"Well, this is mere trifle," I answered. "I want you to take that sturdy much be-ribboned darling of yours to see my poor sick souls in the hospital. A sight of his small face would cheer them. Will you?"

"Why, surely," she said. "How could you doubt it? I shall be delighted."

"And there was another thing—"

"Oh, don't hesitate like that," she exclaimed. "You can't think how you hurt me."

"I very much wish you would take charge of the flowers in the hospital for me, that was what I was going to say, I should be so pleased if you should make them your special care. If you would cut them yourself, and take them and arrange them whenever fresh ones are wanted, you would be giving me as much pleasure as the patients. And you might say something kind to them as you pass through the wards. Even a word makes all the difference in their day."

"Why didn't you ask me to do this before?" she said, reproachfully.

"I was a little afraid of asking you now," I answered.

"I shall begin to-morrow," she said. "Tell me the best time for me to go?"

There is a great deal in the way a thing is put, was my trite reflection afterward. If I had given Evadne my reason for particularly wishing her to visit the hospital, she would have turned it inside out to show me that it was lined with objections; but, now, because I had asked her to oblige me simply, she was ready to go; and would have gone if had cost her half her comfort in life. This was a great step in advance. As in the small-pox epidemic, so now at the hospital, she had no horror of anything she saw. It was always what she imagined that made her morbid.