tatue at the silver shrines,
In deep, perpetual prayer for him she loved;"

but patience, dragging anchor, finally snapped its cable, and now,
instead of an humble suppliant for the boon that alone made existence
endurable, she fiercely demanded that her idol should not be broken,
and, battling with Jehovah, impiously thrust her life down before Him
as an accursed and intolerable burden, unless her prayers were
granted. Ah, what scorpions and stones we gather to our boards, and
then dare charge the stinging mockeries against a long-suffering,
loving God! Ten days before, Salome had meekly prayed, "Thy will be
done," and had comforted herself with the belief that at last she was
beginning to grow pious and trusting, like Miss Jane; but, at the
first hint of harm to Dr. Grey, she sprang up, utterly oblivious of
the protestations of resignation that were scarcely cold on her lips,
and furious as a tigress who sees the hunter approach the jungle where
all her fierce affections centre. God help as all who pray orthodoxly
for His will, and yet, when the emergency arrives, fight desperately
for our own, feeling wofully aggrieved that He takes us at our word,
and moulds the clay which we make a Pharisaical pretense of offering!

A slow drizzling rain whitened the distant hills, that seemed to
blanch in their helplessness as the wind smote them like a flail; and
it wove a grayish veil over the leafless boughs of bending, shivering
elms, on the long, dim avenue. The wintry afternoon closed swiftly,
and, in its dusky dreariness, Salome listened to the tattoo of the
rain on the roof, and to the _miserere_ that wailed through the lonely
chambers of her soul. The chill at her heart froze her to numbness and
oblivion of the coldness of the atmosphere, and, when a servant came
in to close the window against the slanting sleet, she lay so still
that the woman thought her asleep, and stole away on tip-toe. The room
grew dark; but, through the half-opened door, the light from the hall
lamp crept in and fell on the gilded frame and painted face of the
portrait, tracing a silvery path along the gloomy wall. As the night
deepened, that wave of light rippled and glittered until the handsome
features in the picture seemed to belong to some hierarch who peeped
from a window of heaven, into a world drenched with unlifting
darkness.

That oval piece of canvas had become the one fetich to which Salome's
heart clung in silent adoration, defian