ed if my child would ever know it had a mother. So I went slowly
down the street. I never saw the sky so dark and steely a blue as it was
that night: if there had been one star in it, I think it would have
looked softer, more pitying, somehow, when I looked up. Knowing all that
I had done, I yet cannot but feel a pity for the wretch I was that
night. If the home I had desolated, the man and child I had abandoned,
had chosen their revenge, they could not have asked that the woman's
flesh and soul should rise in me with a hunger so mad as this.

At the corner of the street, a group from the crowd had stopped at the
door of a drug-shop; they were anxious, curious, whispering back to
those behind them. Some woman fainting, perhaps, or some one ill. I
could not pass the lock of carriages at the crossing, and stopped,
looking into the green light of the window-bottles. In a moment I caught
my own name, "Manning," from a policeman who came out, and a word or two
added. The crowd drew back with a sudden breath of horror; but I passed
them, and went in. It was a large shop: the lustres, marble
soda-fountains, and glittering shelves of bottles dazzled me at first,
but I saw presently two or three men, from whom the crowd had shrunk
away, standing at the far end of the shop. Something lay on the counter
among them,--a large, black figure, the arm hanging down, the feet
crossed. It did not move. I do not know how long I stood there, it might
be hours, or minutes, and it did not move. But I knew, the first moment
I looked at it, that it never would move again. They worked with him,
the three men, not speaking a word. The waistcoat and shirt were open;
there was a single drop of blood on the neck, where they had tried to
open a vein. After a while the physician drew back, and put his hand
gently on the shoulder of the shorter, stouter of the other two men.

"My friend," he said, compassionately.

Robert Manning did not seem to hear him. He had knelt on the floor and
hid his face in the hand that hung down still and cold. The druggist, a
pale, little person, drew the doctor aside.

"What is it, now? Apoplexy?" his face full of pity.

"No. Brought on by nervous excitement,--heart, you know. Threatened a
long time, his son says. His wife, the woman who"----

The policeman had been eying my dress under the cloak for some time.

"Hi! _You_'d best move on," he whispered. "This a'n't no place for the
likes of you."

I stood still a