mulated
enumeration of his merits, as her knowledge of the secret of pathos knew
to be most moving, in an extreme fear that she might weaken her required
energies for action at the approaching signal.

Feet came rushing up the stairs: her door was thrown open, and the
living Marko, stranger than a dead, stood present. He had in his look an
expectation that she would be glad to behold him, and he asked her, and
she said: 'Oh, yes, she was glad, of course.' She was glad that Alvan
had pardoned him for his rashness; she was vexed that her projected
confusion of the household had been thwarted: vexed, petrified with
astonishment.

'But how if I tell you that Alvan is wounded?' he almost wept to say.

Clotilde informs the world that she laughed on hearing this. She was
unaware of her ground for laughing: It was the laugh of the tragic
comedian.

Could one believe in a Providence capable of letting such a sapling and
weakling strike down the most magnificent stature upon earth?

'You--him!' she said, in the tremendous compression of her contempt.

She laughed. The world is upside down--a world without light, or
pointing finger, or affection for special favourites, and therefore
bereft of all mysterious and attractive wisdom, a crazy world, a corpse
of a world--if this be true!

But it can still be disbelieved.

He stood by her dejectedly, and she sent him flying with a repulsive,
'Leave me!' The youth had too much on his conscience to let him linger.
His manner of going smote her brain.

Was it credible? Was it possible to think of Alvan wounded?--the giant
laid on his back and in the hands of the leech? Assuredly it was a
mockery of all calculations. She could not conjure up the picture of
him, and her emotions were merely struck and stunned. If this be true!

But it can be resolutely disbelieved.

We can put it before Providence to cleanse itself of this thing, or
suffer the consequence that we now and for ever quit our worship,
lose our faith in it and our secret respect. She heard Marko's tale
confirmed, whispers of leaden import, physicians' rumours, and she
doubted. She clung insanely to her incredulity. Laughter had been slain,
but not her belief in the invincibility of Alvan; she could not imagine
him overthrown in a conflict--and by a hand that she had taken and
twisted in her woman's hand subduingly! He, the unerring shot, laid low
by one who had never burnt powder till the day before the duel! It
was