semblance of life. He would sit and look at the
features his own hand had so faithfully wrought, until it seemed as if
the lips moved, sometimes as if they were smiling, sometimes as if they
were ready to speak to him. His companions began to whisper strange
things of him in the studio,--that his eye was getting an unnatural
light,--that he talked as if to imaginary listeners,--in short, that
there was a look as if something were going wrong with his brain,
which it might be feared would spoil his fine intelligence. It was
the undecided battle, and the enemy, as in his noblest moments he had
considered the growing passion, was getting the better of him.

He was sitting one afternoon before the fatal bust which had smiled and
whispered away his peace, when the post-man brought him a letter. It was
from the simple girl to whom he had given his promise. We know how she
used to prattle in her harmless way about her innocent feelings, and the
trifling matters that were going on in her little village world. But now
she wrote in sadness. Something, she did not too clearly explain what,
had grieved her, and she gave free expression to her feelings. "I have
no one that loves me but you," she said; "and if you leave me I must
droop and die. Are you true to me, dearest Clement,--true as when we
promised each other that we would love while life lasted? Or have you
forgotten one who will never cease to remember that she was once your
own Susan?"

Clement dropped the letter from his hand, and sat a long hour looking
at the exquisitely wrought features of her who had come between him and
honor and his plighted word.

At length he arose, and, lifting the bust tenderly from its pedestal,
laid it upon the cloth with which it had been covered. He wrapped it
closely, fold upon fold, as the mother whom man condemns and God pities
wraps the child she loves before she lifts her hand against its life.
Then he took a heavy hammer and shattered his lovely idol into shapeless
fragments. The strife was over.

CHAPTER XXII. A CHANGE OF PROGRAMME.

Mr. William Murray Bradshaw was in pretty intimate relations with Miss
Cynthia Badlam. It was well understood between them that it might be of
very great advantage to both of them if he should in due time become
the accepted lover of Myrtle Hazard. So long as he could be reasonably
secure against interference, he did not wish to hurry her in making
her decision. Two things he did wish to be sur