open, slunk barefoot down a long passage and up the broad staircase,
which creaked occasionally, to the second story, where his sweetheart's
room was, and stayed there for hours.

"One night, when it was darker than usual, and he was hurrying lest he
should be later than the time agreed on, he knocked up against a piece
of furniture in the anteroom and upset it. It so happened that the
girl's mother had not gone to sleep, either because she had a sick
headache, or else be cause she had sat up late over some novel, and,
frightened at that unusual noise which disturbed the silence of the
house, she jumped out of bed, opened the door, saw some one indistinctly
running away and keeping close to the wall, and, immediately thinking
that there were burglars in the house, she aroused her husband and the
servants by her frantic screams. The unfortunate man understood the
situation; and, seeing what a terrible fix he was in, and preferring to
be taken for a common thief to dishonoring his adored one's name, he
ran into the drawing-room, felt on the tables and what-nots, filled
his pockets at random with valuable bric-a-brac, and then cowered down
behind the grand piano, which barred the corner of a large room.

"The servants, who had run in with lighted candles, found him, and,
overwhelming him with abuse, seized him by the collar and dragged him,
panting and apparently half dead with shame and terror, to the nearest
police station. He defended himself with intentional awkwardness when
he was brought up for trial, kept up his part with the most perfect
self-possession and without any signs of the despair and anguish that
he felt in his heart, and, condemned and degraded and made to suffer
martyrdom in his honor as a man and a soldier--he was an officer--he did
not protest, but went to prison as one of those criminals whom society
gets rid of like noxious vermin.

"He died there of misery and of bitterness of spirit, with the name of
the fair-haired idol, for whom he had sacrificed himself, on his lips,
as if it had been an ecstatic prayer, and he intrusted his will 'to the
priest who administered extreme unction to him, and requested him to
give it to me. In it, without mentioning anybody, and without in the
least lifting the veil, he at last explained the enigma, and cleared
himself of those accusations the terrible burden of which he had borne
until his last breath.

"I have always thought myself, though I do not know why,