ed so fair in her dreams. The fire from heaven that sheds
abroad its light in the heart, in the dawn of love, had been quenched
in tears, the first real tears which she had shed; henceforth she must
always suffer, because it was no longer in her power to be what once
she might have been. This is a belief which turns us in aversion and
bitterness of spirit from any proffered new delight.

Julie had come to look at life from the point of view of age about to
die. Young though she felt, the heavy weight of joyless days had fallen
upon her, and left her broken-spirited and old before her time. With a
despairing cry, she asked the world what it could give her in exchange
for the love now lost, by which she had lived. She asked herself whether
in that vanished love, so chaste and pure, her will had not been more
criminal than her deeds, and chose to believe herself guilty; partly
to affront the world, partly for her own consolation, in that she had
missed the close union of body and soul, which diminishes the pain of
the one who is left behind by the knowledge that once it has known and
given joy to the full, and retains within itself the impress of that
which is no more.

Something of the mortification of the actress cheated of her part
mingled with the pain which thrilled through every fibre of her heart
and brain. Her nature had been thwarted, her vanity wounded, her woman's
generosity cheated of self-sacrifice. Then, when she had raised all
these questions, set vibrating all the springs in those different
phases of being which we distinguish as social, moral, and physical,
her energies were so far exhausted and relaxed that she was powerless to
grasp a single thought amid the chase of conflicting ideas.

Sometimes as the mists fell, she would throw her window open, and would
stay there, motionless, breathing in unheedingly the damp earthly scent
in the air, her mind to all appearance an unintelligent blank, for the
ceaseless burden of sorrow humming in her brain left her deaf to earth's
harmonies and insensible to the delights of thought.

One day, towards noon, when the sun shone out for a little, her maid
came in without a summons.

"This is the fourth time that M. le Cure has come to see Mme. la
Marquise; to-day he is so determined about it, that we did not know what
to tell him."

"He has come to ask for some money for the poor, no doubt; take him
twenty-five louis from me."

The woman went only to return.