after she had resumed her seat, "I knew,
from the description which my kind friends afterward gave me, that
Anna Correlli had come there to assure herself that her rival was
really dead. When--suspecting from her manner that she might know
something about me--they questioned her, she told them that, 'from
what she had read in the papers, she feared it might be some one whom
she knew; but she was mistaken--I was nothing to her--she had never
seen me before.' Then she went away with an air of utter indifference,
and I was left fortunately to the kindness of that noble hearted
brother and sister. They did everything that the fondest relatives
could have done, and, in their divine pity for one so friendless and
unfortunate, neglected not the smallest detail which they would have
bestowed upon an own sister. Only they, besides the undertaker and the
one Protestant pastor in the city, were present during the reading of
the service; and when that was over, Willard Livermore, actuated by
some unaccountable impulse, insisted upon closing the casket. He bent
over me to remove a Roman lily which his sister had placed in my
hands, and which he wished to preserve, and, while doing so, observed
that my fingers were no longer rigid--that the nails were even faintly
tinted. He was startled, and instantly summoned his sister. Hardly had
her own fingers pressed my pulse in search of evidence of life, when
my eyes unclosed and I moaned:

"'Don't let her come near me! She has stolen all the love out of my
life!"

"Then I immediately relapsed again into unconsciousness without even
knowing I had spoken. Later, when told of the fact, I could dimly
recall the sensation of a sudden shock which was instantly followed by
a vision of Anna Correlli's face and the sound of her voice, and I
firmly believe, to-day, that it was her presence alone that startled
my chilled pulses once more into action and thus awoke to new life the
torpid soul which had so nearly passed out into the great unknown."

Could the narrator have seen the face of the listener outside, her
tongue would have been paralyzed and the remainder of her story would
never have been told; for Anna Goddard, upon learning that she had
been the means of calling back to earth the woman whose existence had
shorn her of every future hope, looked--with her wild eyes and
demoniac face--as if she could be capable of any act that would
utterly annihilate the unsuspicious companion of the man w