came as sweet
incense to her nostrils. No one knew she had come. No one would ever
enter her door again. She might die peacefully in her own house, and
no one would know until the walls crumbled to dust--perhaps not even
then. And Miss Evelina had a horror of a grave.

She drew a long breath of the bitterness. The silken leaves of the
poppies--flowers of sleep--had been crushed into this. The lees must
be drained from the Cup of Life before the Cup could be set aside.
Every one came to this, sooner or later. Why not choose? Why not
drain the Cup now? When it had all been bitter, why hesitate to drink
the lees?

The monstrous and incredible passion of the race was slowly creeping
upon her. Her eyes gleamed and her cheeks burned. The hunger for
death at her own hands and on her own terms possessed her frail body to
the full. "If there had been a God in Heaven," she said, aloud,
"surely I must have died!"

The words startled her and her hand shook so that some of the laudanum
was spilled. It was long since she had heard her own voice in more
than a monosyllabic answer to some necessary question. Inscrutably
veiled in many folds of chiffon, she held herself apart from the world,
and the world, carelessly kind, had left her wholly to herself.

Slowly, she put the cork tightly into the vial and slipped it back into
her bag. "Tomorrow," she sighed; "to-morrow I shall set myself free."

The fire flickered and without warning the candle went out, in a gust
of wind which shook the house to its foundations. Stray currents of
air had come through the crevices of the rattling windows and kept up
an imperfect ventilation. She took another candle from her satchel,
put it into a candlestick of blackened brass, and slowly ascended the
stairs.

She went to her own room, though her feet failed her at the threshold
and she sank helplessly to the floor. Too weak to stand, she made her
way on her knees to her bed, leaving the candle in the hall, just
outside her door. As she had suspected, it was hardest of all to enter
this room.

A pink and white gown of dimity, yellowed, and grimed with dust, yet
lay upon her bed. Cobwebs were woven over the lace that trimmed the
neck and sleeves. Out of the fearful shadows, mute reminders of a lost
joy mocked her from every corner of the room.

She knelt there until some measure of strength came back to her, and,
with it, a mad fancy. "To-night," she said to herself, "I wi