n tint of the birth-mark--that
sole token of human imperfection--faded from her cheek, the parting
breath of the now perfect woman passed into the atmosphere, and her
soul, lingering a moment near her husband, took its heavenward flight.
Then a hoarse, chuckling laugh was heard again! Thus ever does the gross
Fatality of Earth exult in its invariable triumph over the immortal
essence, which, in this dim sphere of half-development, demands the
completeness of a higher state. Yet, had Aylmer reached a profounder
wisdom, he need not thus have flung away the happiness, which would have
woven his mortal life of the self-same texture with the celestial. The
momentary circumstance was too strong for him; he failed to look beyond
the shadowy scope of Time, and living once for all in Eternity, to find
the perfect Future in the present.

A TERRIBLY STRANGE BED

WILKIE COLLINS

Shortly after my education at college was finished, I happened to be
staying at Paris with an English friend. We were both young men then,
and lived, I am afraid, rather a wild life, in the delightful city of
our sojourn. One night we were idling about the neighbourhood of the
Palais Royal, doubtful to what amusement we should next betake
ourselves. My friend proposed a visit to Frascati's; but his suggestion
was not to my taste. I knew Frascati's, as the French saying is, by
heart; had lost and won plenty of five-franc pieces there, merely for
amusement's sake, until it was amusement no longer, and was thoroughly
tired, in fact, of all the ghastly respectabilities of such a social
anomaly as a respectable gambling-house.

"For Heaven's sake," said I to my friend, "let us go somewhere where we
can see a little genuine, blackguard, poverty-stricken gaming, with no
false gingerbread glitter thrown over it at all. Let us get away from
fashionable Frascati's, to a house where they don't mind letting in a
man with a ragged coat, or a man with no coat, ragged or otherwise."

"Very well," said my friend, "we needn't go out of the Palais Royal to
find the sort of company you want. Here's the place just before us; as
blackguard a place, by all report, as you could possibly wish to see."

In another minute we arrived at the door, and entered the house.

When we got upstairs, and had left our hats and sticks with the
doorkeeper, we were admitted into the chief gambling-room. We did not
find many people assembled there. But, few as the men were who looke