approached the table, and
began, in a voice but slightly broken, the reading of her melancholy
soliloquy. But, as she laid her hand on the skull, she gave a wild start
of horror,--not at the touch of the cold, smooth bone, nor at the blank,
black stare of the eyeless sockets, but at finding beneath her hand a
mass of soft, curling hair, damp, as with night-dew!--at beholding eyes
with "speculation" in them,--ay, with human passions, luminous and
full,--eyes that now yearned with love, now burned with hate,--ah, God!
the eyes of Lawrence Bury!

With a shrill, frenzied shriek, Zelma sprang back and stood for a moment
shuddering and crouching in a mute agony of fear. Then she burst into
wild cries of grief and passionate entreaty, stretching her tremulous
hands into the void air, in piteous imploring.

"She has gone mad! Take her away!" shouted the excited audience; but
before any one could reach her, she had fallen on the stage in strong
convulsions.

The actors raised her and bore her out; and as they did so, a little
stream of blood was seen to bubble from her lips. A medical man, who
happened to be present, having proffered his services, was hurried
behind the scenes to where the sufferer lay, on a rude couch in the
green-room, surrounded by the frightened players, and wept over by her
faithful little maid.

The audience lingered awhile within sound of the fitful, frenzied cries
of the dying actress, and then dispersed in dismay and confusion.

Zelma remained for some hours convulsed and delirious; but toward
morning she sank into a deep, swoon-like sleep of utter exhaustion. She
awoke from this, quite sane and calm, but marble-white and cold,--the
work of death all done, it seemed, save the dashing out of the sad, wild
light yet burning in her sunken eyes. But the bright red blood no longer
oozed from her lips, and they told her she was better. She gave no heed
to the assurance, but, somewhat in her old, quick, decisive way, called
for the manager. Scarcely had he reached her side, when she began to
question him eagerly, though in hoarse, failing tones, in regard to the
skull used in the play of the preceding night. The manager had procured
it of the sexton, he said, and knew nothing more of it.

She sent for the sexton. He came,--a man "of the earth, earthy,"--a man
with a grave-ward stoop and a strange uneven gait, caught in forty
years' stumbling over mounds. A smell of turf and mould, an odor of
mortality,