" he replied, "if you knew how _my_ heart aches, aches
till it's ready to burst, you would ask no philosophy from me. When I
see and hear you, I have enough to do, not to give utterance to the
fiercest cry of woe that ever burst from the lips of a thinking mortal.
What could I say to you--except the most pitiful commonplaces. You
question me about the mystery of life. The clue to it, which one and
another fancies he has found, is but a new enigma; and it is equally
mysterious that there should be men who are forced to rack their brains
about this mystery until their hearts break, while others have never a
sleepless moment, but await the solution as patiently as the answer to
a charade which is to appear 'in our next number.' Meantime it is
ordered--or we must see to it ourselves--that life and its work,
thoughtless everyday work, withdraws us from our agitating search for
the solution to the riddle. Dear Toinette--"

"I know what you're going to say," she quickly interrupted. "My
idleness is the cause of all my sorrows. If I had something to do, I
should not have time to ponder four and twenty hours a day over what I
most lack. Is not that what you were about to say? To establish a
child's school or hospital, make clothes for deaf mutes, or in my
old age strive to cultivate a talent for painting or playing on the
piano--all I these would be delightful occupations! But I'm not
affectionate enough for one, or vain enough for the other. I don't love
human beings, my friend, I mean abstract human beings, mankind. And
yet, I know now that my only talent would have been love; but the love
I mean, is love for one man and that man's children, and because I
learned this too late--I must go to ruin--to ruin.

"But no," she suddenly exclaimed, and a passionate flush crimsoned her
cheeks as she pushed the table aside and rose from the sofa. "I will
not go to ruin, will not yield the right of self-defence and suffer my
claim to happiness to be wrested from me, as it is from every
disinherited soul. Words are of no avail against the decrees of fate,
didn't you say so, Edwin? You're right, we must act, if we desire to
win the respect of the 'so-called gods;' therefore I've come to you, my
friend. Do not look at me so! You know what has brought me here, even
if a wretched remnant of cowardice does not suffer me to express it. Be
merciful, spare me, and tell me that you know all and will not thrust
me from the only place where I can fi