's constitution has wonderfully helped
the success of her plan. It seems she has a predisposition to this
complaint; and though, in the ordinary course, she might have lived a
long time, a few days' folly has made the case desperate.

I cannot tell you what I felt on hearing this sentence, based on such
clear explanations. You know that I have lived in Louise as much as in
my own life. I was simply crushed, and could not stir to escort to the
door these harbingers of evil. I don't know how long I remained lost
in bitter thoughts, the tears running down my cheeks, when I was roused
from my stupor by the words:

"So there is no hope for me!" in a clear, angelic voice.

It was Louise, with her hand on my shoulder. She made me get up, and
carried me off to her small drawing-room. With a beseeching glance, she
went on:

"Stay with me to the end; I won't have doleful faces round me. Above
all, I must keep the truth from _him_. I know that I have the strength
to do it. I am full of youth and spirit, and can die standing! For
myself, I have no regrets. I am dying as I wished to die, still young
and beautiful, in the perfection of my womanhood.

"As for him, I can see very well now that I should have made his
life miserable. Passion has me in its grips, like a struggling fawn,
impatient of the toils. My groundless jealousy has already wounded
him sorely. When the day came that my suspicions met only
indifference--which in the long run is the rightful meed of all
jealousy--well, that would have been my death. I have had my share of
life. There are people whose names on the muster-roll of the world show
sixty years of service, and yet in all that time they have not had
two years of real life, whilst my record of thirty is doubled by the
intensity of my love.

"Thus for him, as well as for me, the close is a happy one. But between
us, dear Renee, it is different. You lose a loving sister, and that is a
loss which nothing can repair. You alone here have the right to mourn my
death."

After a long pause, during which I could only see her through a mist of
tears, she continued:

"The moral of my death is a cruel one. My dear doctor in petticoats was
right; marriage cannot rest upon passion as its foundation, nor even
upon love. How fine and noble is your life! keeping always to the one
safe road, you give your husband an ever-growing affection; while the
passionate eagerness with which I threw myself into wedded life was
bo