ed to ring. Yet I could not
move, nor speak, nor weep--no wretchedness was ever more supreme than
this cataleptic seizure. Evelyn was the first to break the transient
silence.

"Your path is a plain one, Claude Bainrothe; fulfill your contract,
sealed with gold, and bear patiently your selected lot."

"Evelyn, one word--let it be sincere: do you hate and scorn me? Answer
me as you would speak to your own soul."

"No, Claude, no, yet the blow was hard to bear--struck, too, as you must
reflect, so suddenly! Only the day before abandonment, remember, you had
made protestations of such undying constancy. Your conduct was surely
inconstant, at least."

"I make them still, those professions you scorn so deeply."

"Away, false man, lest the sleeper awaken!"

"You say there is no danger of that, and that in their coffins the dead
are not more insensible."

"To see you kneeling at my feet might bring the dead even to life," she
laughed, contemptuously. "I am sick of this drama; be natural for once.
We can both afford to be so now."

"Do not spurn me, Evelyn! Never was my love for you so wild as now." I
heard him kissing her hands passionately, and his voice, as he spoke
these words, was choked with grief.

"O Claude, let my hand go; at least consider appearances. Mrs. Austin
will be here in a moment now; what will she think of you? What am I to
think of such caprice?"

"One word, then, Evelyn--tell me that you forgive me--on such conditions
I will release your hands."

"When I forgive you, Claude, I shall be wholly indifferent to you," she
said, gently. "Do you still claim forgiveness? I am not angry, though,
take that assurance for all comfort. Then, if you will have it" (and I
heard a kiss exchanged), "this confirmation."

"Then you are not wholly indifferent to me, Evelyn?" he said, in eager
tones, "you care for me still--a little?"

"A very little, Claude"--hesitatingly.

"Say that you love me, Evelyn, just once more--I can then die happy."

"Claude Bainrothe, arise--unhand me--this is child's play--let me
breathe freely again. Well do you know I love you. O God! why do you
return to a theme so bitter and profitless to both? Come, let us look
together on Miriam sleeping, and gather strength and courage from such
contemplation. Come, my friend!"

The curtains were lifted--still I lay rigidly and with closed eyelids
before them--not from any notion of my own, but from the helplessness of
my agony and the c