pectral change, the burnt-out look. It was a
face like a crystal lamp in which the flame has died. The ghastly little
skull-cap showed forth its wanness rigidly. Rhoda wondered to hear her
talk simply of home and the old life. At each question, the then and the
now struck her spirit with a lightning flash of opposing scenes. But the
talk deepened. Dahlia's martyrdom was near, and their tongues were
hurried into plain converse of the hour, and then Dahlia faltered and
huddled herself up like a creature swept by the torrent; Rhoda learnt
that, instead of hate or loathing of the devilish man who had deceived
her, love survived. Upon Dahlia's lips it was compassion and forgiveness;
but Rhoda, in her contempt for the word, called it love. Dahlia submitted
gladly to the torture of interrogation; "Do you, can you care for him
still?" and sighed in shame and fear of her sister, not daring to say she
thought her harsh, not daring to plead for escape, as she had done with
Robert.

"Why is there no place for the unhappy, who do not wish to live, and
cannot die?" she moaned.

And Rhoda cruelly fixed her to the marriage, making it seem irrevocable,
and barring all the faint lights to the free outer world, by praise of
her--passionate praise of her--when she confessed, that half inanimate
after her recovery from the fever, and in the hope that she might thereby
show herself to her father, she had consented to devote her life to the
only creature who was then near her to be kind to her. Rhoda made her
relate how this man had seen her first, and how, by untiring diligence,
he had followed her up and found her. "He--he must love you," said Rhoda;
and in proportion as she grew more conscious of her sister's weakness,
and with every access of tenderness toward her, she felt that Dahlia must
be thought for very much as if she were a child.

Dahlia tried to float out some fretting words for mercy, on one or other
of her heavy breathings; but her brain was under lead. She had a thirst
for Rhoda's praise in her desolation; it was sweet, though the price of
it was her doing an abhorred thing. Abhorred? She did not realize the
consequences of the act, or strength would have come to her to wrestle
with the coil: a stir of her blood would have endued her with womanly
counsel and womanly frenzy; nor could Rhoda have opposed any real
vehemence of distaste to the union on Dahlia's part. But Dahlia's blood
was frozen, her brain was under lead. She