heart-notes of evenings together
especially happy; there were two birthdays still singing for joy, and
sometimes there was a saying of his she had put down because it was so
helpful, or a poem she had copied out; and also there were clever little
criticisms of books she had read, and sometimes a wise little reflection
of her own,--which brought home to him, with a certain pang, that the
little child who had seemed so dependent on him had been an independent
personality, after all.

As he came to the last entry, he put the book down with a gesture of
pain. The last entry had been made the day after Jenny had discovered
Theophil's love for Isabel. It was very brief, just a sob: "Have
realised that I am no fit wife for Theophil. And yet how I love him!"

As Theophil read this, all that sad night came back to him with
unbearable vividness, and he felt once more a little sobbing body crying
its heart out against his. At that moment he would have endured
centuries of torment just to have undone what could never be undone; and
an awful thought that he had not dared allow into the daylight of his
mind, suddenly sprang hideous in full view of his stricken soul: the
thought that, however he might soothe its intolerable pain, he it was
who had--killed Jenny. "She seems to have had a shock," a voice was
saying over and over again, "she seems to have had a shock."

A shock! Yes! and Isabel, whom all this time, he had kept thrust in the
outer darkness of thought, forbidding his soul to breathe her name, now
sprang into vivid light again in company with that thought. In that
moment he felt to hate her, and it was with a cruel mental oath he
hurled her back again into the dark. It was she, _she_ who had made
him--kill Jenny!

But this was a thought that either must kill him, or be made endurable
by some advocate of the stricken conscience; and it was with no wish to
deceive himself, or to escape from his sin, that Theophil told himself
that this murder of a soul, to which he pleaded guilty, was indeed no
wilful act, but the accident of two tragically conditioned souls, who
had planned, at their own agony, a fate of happiest life for Jenny.

Yet, the accuser urged, are not theories of life which thus jeopardise
the happiness of human souls theories which it is criminal to hold?
Shall you try your new ways to heaven at the risk of broken hearts?

But a voice said--was it Jenny's?--this poor Theophil and Isabel love by
reason of no