it be that after all it does not signify so much?" she said
aloud, but only to herself, meditating in the light of a little
glow-worm of hope. "Oh if it could be so! And what is it really so much?
I have not murdered any body!--I _will_ tell you, Paul!"

She drew his head closer down, laid her lips to his ear, gave a great
gasp, and whispered two or three words. He started up, sundering at once
the bonds of her clasped hands, cast one brief stare at her, turned,
walked, with a great quick stride to his dressing-room, entered, and
closed the door.

As if with one rush of a fell wind, they were ages, deserts, empty
star-spaces apart! She was outside the universe, in the cold frenzy of
infinite loneliness. The wolves of despair were howling in her. But Paul
was in the next room! There was only the door between them! She sprung
from her bed and ran to a closet. The next moment she appeared in her
husband's dressing-room.

Paul sat sunk together in his chair, his head hanging forward, his teeth
set, his whole shape, in limb and feature, carrying the show of
profound, of irrecoverable injury. He started to his feet when she
entered. She did not once lift her eyes to his face, but sunk on her
knees before him, hurriedly slipped her night-gown from her shoulders to
her waist, and over her head, bent toward the floor, held up to him a
riding-whip.

They were baleful stars that looked down on that naked world beneath
them.

To me scarce any thing is so utterly pathetic as the back. That of an
animal even is full of sad suggestion. But the human back!--It is the
other, the dark side of the human moon; the blind side of the being,
defenseless, and exposed to every thing; the ignorant side, turned
toward the abyss of its unknown origin; the unfeatured side, eyeless and
dumb and helpless--the enduring animal of the marvelous commonwealth, to
be given to the smiter, and to bend beneath the burden--lovely in its
patience and the tender forms of its strength.

An evil word, resented by the lowest of our sisters, rushed to the man's
lips, but died there in a strangled murmur.

"Paul!" said Juliet, in a voice from whose tone it seemed as if her soul
had sunk away, and was crying out of a hollow place of the earth, "take
it--take it. Strike me."

He made no reply--stood utterly motionless, his teeth clenched so hard
that he could not have spoken without grinding them. She waited as
motionless, her face bowed to the floor, the wh