rt and that when we all
take hold of hands, we shall see that the scoundrels excluded from our
ring will be scarcely worth disabling from farther injury."

Cesarine, perceiving that her confederate was edging gradually toward
the rifle which Antonino had been shooting with and which had been
removed from the drawing-room, where the guest for a day had too many
opportunities to be alone with it. To cover his inspection, she
suggested that Rebecca should afford the company a final pleasure, a
kind of swan's song, and went and opened the cottage-piano for her. The
Jewess did not refuse the invitation and began Gounod's "Medje" in a
voice which Von Sendlingen had room to admit had improved in tone and
volumn, and would make her as worthy of the grand opera house as it had,
five years before, of the Harmonista and its class. Daniels quietly left
the room, loth to disturb Clemenceau, whom that voice enthralled and who
became more and more deeply submerged in the thoughts it engendered. He
suffered pain from the need to liberate his sorrows, confide his spirit
and communicate his dreams. And was not this singer the very one created
to comfort him and lull him to rest? Must he remain heroic and
ridiculous in the indissoluble bond, and endure silently. On Antonino he
rested his mind and on Rebecca, the daughter of the eternally
persecuted, he longed to rest his soul.

The greatness of this man and the purity of this gifted creature were so
clearly made for one another that everybody divined and understood the
unspoken, immaterial love.

What an oversight to have let Cesarine abduct him when it was Rebecca to
whom chance had shown that he ought to belong! If he had remained free
till this second meeting, she would have been his wife, his companion
his seventh day repose, and the mother of his earthly offspring instead
of the immortal twins, genius and glory, which poorly consoled the
childless husband! As it was, the powers constituted would not allow
them to dwell near each other. She could only be the bride in the second
life--for eternity. She loved him as few women had ever loved, because
he was good, great and just--and because he was unhappy. No man existed
in her eyes superior to him. Nothing but death would set him free from
the woman who had not appreciated him properly. She had let pass the
greatest bliss a woman can know on earth--the love of a true heart and
the protection of a great intellect. If death struck them