rateful. You had become the sun of my life,
and when your face was turned away, the flower that spread itself
joyfully in the light, drooped and faded. And now, the light has
come back again; but it cannot warm into freshness and beauty the
withered blossom."

"Oh, my Edith! Say not so! Live for me! I have no thoughts, no
affection that is not for you. The drooping flower will lift itself
again in the sunshine when the clouds have passed away."

As the young man said this, Edith raised herself up suddenly, and,
with a fond gesture, flung herself forward upon his bosom. For a few
moments her form quivered in his arms. Then all became still, and he
felt her lying heavier and heavier against him. In a little while he
was conscious that he clasped to his heart only the earthly
semblance of one who had passed away forever.

Replacing the light and faded form of her who, a little while
before, had been in the vigor of health, upon the bed, Edwin gazed
upon the sunken features for a few moments, and then, leaving a last
kiss upon her cold lips, hurried aware.

Another page in his Book of Life was written, There was another
record there from which memory, in after life, could read. And such
a record! What would he not have given to erase that page!

When the body of Edith Walter was borne to its last resting-place,
Florence was among the mourners. After looking his last look upon
the coffin that contained the body, he went away, sadder in heart
than he had ever been in his life. He was not only a prey to
sadness, but to painful self-accusation. In his perfidy lay the
cause of her death. He had broken the heart that confided in him,
and only repented of his error when it was too late to repair the
ruin.

As to what was thought or said of him by others, Edwin Florence
cared but little. There was enough of pain in his own
self-consciousness. He withdrew himself from the social circle, and,
for several years, lived a kind of hermit-life in the midst of
society. But, he was far from being happy in his solitude; for
Memory was with him, and almost daily, from the Book of his Life,
read to him some darkly written page.

One day, it was three years from the time he parted with Edith in
the chamber of death, and when he was beginning to rise in a measure
above the depressing influences attendant upon that event,--he
received an invitation to make one of a social party on the next
evening. The desire to go back again in society