deed and in truth you are. The marriage can be delayed, and then you
can have an explanation with the viscount, and break it off altogether."

"And break my plighted faith! Is that your advice, young moralist?"

"There was no faith in your plighted word, Claudia. It was very wrong to
promise to marry a man you could not love; but it would be criminal to
keep such a promise. Speak candidly to his lordship, Claudia, and ask
him to release you from your engagement. My word on it he will do it."

"Of course, and make me the town talk for the delight of all who envy
me."

"Better be that than an unloving wife."

"No, Bee! I must fulfill my destiny. And, besides, I never thought of
turning from it. I am in the power of the whirlpool or the demon."

"It is the demon--the demon that is carrying you down into this
whirlpool. And the name of the demon is Ambition, Claudia; and the name
of the whirlpool is Ruin."

"Yes! it is ambition that possesses my soul. None other but the sins by
which angels fell would have power to draw my soul down from heaven--for
heaven was possible to me, once!" And with these last words she melted
into tears and wept as if the fountains of her heart were broken up and
gushing through her eyes.

"Yes," she repeated in the pauses of her weeping. "Heaven was possible
for me once! Never more, oh, never, never more! Filled with the
ambition of Lucifer I have cast myself out of that heaven. But alas!
alas! I have Lucifer's ambition without his strength to suffer."

"Claudia, dear Claudia!"

"Do not speak to me. Let me speak, for I must speak, or die! It is not
only that I do not love this viscount, but, oh, Bee!" she wailed in the
prolonged tones of unutterable woe, "I love another! I love Ishmael!"

There was a sudden movement and a fall.

"You push me from you! Oh, cruel friend! Let me lay my head upon your
lap again, Bee, and sob out all this anguish here. I must, or my heart
will burst. I love Ishmael! His love is the heaven of heavens from which
Ambition has cast me down. I love Ishmael! Oh, how much, my reason,
utterly overthrown, may some time betray to the world! This love fills
my soul. Oh, more than that, it is greater than my soul; it goes beyond
it, into infinitude! There is light, warmth, and life where Ishmael is;
darkness, coldness, and death where he is not! To meet his eyes,--those
beautiful, dark, luminous eyes, that seem like inlets to some perfect
inner world of wisdom, love,