from the brink of an abyss, with her loving, girlish
hands; and she ended with an outburst of anguish.

"Why did n't she tell you?" she said. "For my sake she did not want the
rest to know; but why did not she tell you? I cannot understand."

"She tried to tell me," he said, in an agony of self-reproach, as he
began to see what he had done,--"she tried to tell me, and I would not
hear her."

All his bygone sufferings--and, Heaven knows, he had suffered bitterly
and heavily enough--sank into insignificance before the misery of this
hour. To know how true and pure of heart she had been; to know how
faithful, unselfish, sweet; to remember how she had met him with a
tender little cry of joy, with outstretched, innocent hands, that he had
thrust aside; to remember the old golden days in which she had so clung
to him, and brightened his life; to think how he had left her lying
upon the sofa that night, her white face drooping piteously against
the cushions; to have all come back to him and know that he only was to
blame; to know it all too late. Nay, a whole life of future bliss could
never quite efface the memory of such a passion of remorse and pain.

"Oh, my God!" he prayed, "have mercy upon me!" And then he turned upon
Mollie. "Tell me where to go to; tell me, and let me go. I must go to
her now without a moment's waiting. My poor, faithful little girl,--my
pretty Dolly! Dying,--dying! No, I don't believe it,--I won't. She
cannot die yet. Fate has been cruel enough to us, but it cannot be so
cruel as that. Love will _make_ her live."

He dashed down Mollie's directions in desperate, feverish haste upon a
leaf of his memorandum-book, and then he bade her good-by.

"God bless you, dear!" he said. "Perhaps you have saved us both. I am
going to her now. Pray for me."

"I ought rather to pray for myself," she said; "but for me you would
never have been separated. I have done it all."

And a few minutes after he had gone, Ralph Gowan, who had awaited her
return before the window, turned to see her enter the room like a spirit
and fling herself down before him, looking white and shaken and pale.

"I have found it all out now," she cried. "I have found it all out. I
have done all this, Mr. Gowan; it is through me her heart is broken, and
if she dies, I shall have caused her death, as surely as if I had killed
her with my own hand. Oh, save me from thinking she will die,--help me
to think she will live,--help me!"

Ther