it measured the thread slowly, loath to
part,--remember streaking its great ebony case with a little finger,
misting it with a warm breath. Throb after throb,--is it going to peal
forever? Stop, solemn clangor! hearts, stop! Midnight.

The nurses have gone down; she sits there alone. Her bent side-face is
full of pity. Now and then her head turns; the great brown eyes lift
heavily, and lie on me,--heavily, as if the sight of me pained her. Ah,
in me perishes her youth! death enters her world! Besides, she loves me.
I do not want her love,--I would fling it off; but I am faint,--I am
impotent,--I am so cold! Not that she lives, and I die,--not that she
has peace, and I tumult,--not for her voice's music,--not for her eye's
lustre,--not for any charm of her womanly presence,--neither for her
clear, fair soul,--nor that, when the storm and winter pass, and I am
stiff and frozen, she smiles in the sun, and leads new life,--not for
all this I hate her; but because my going gives her what I
lost,--because, I stepped aside, the light falls on her,--because from
my despair springs her happiness. Poor fool! let her be happy, if she
can! Her mother was a Willoughby! And what is a flower that blows on a
grave?

Why do I remember so distinctly one night alone of all my life,--one
night, when we dance in the low room of a seaside cottage,--dance to
Lu's singing? He leads me to her, when the dance is through, brushing
with his head the festooned nets that swing from the rafters,--and in at
the open casement is blown a butterfly, a dead butterfly, from off the
sea. She holds it compassionately till I pin it on my dress,--the wings,
twin magnificences, freckled and barred and dusty with gold, fluttering
at my breath. Some one speaks with me; she strays to the window, he
follows, and they are silent. He looks far away over the gray loneliness
stretching beyond. At length he murmurs: "A brief madness makes my long
misery. Louise, if the earth were dazzled aside from her constant
pole-star to worship some bewildering comet, would she be more forlorn
than I?"

"Dear Rose! your art remains," I hear her say.

He bends lower, that his breath may scorch her brow. "Was I wrong? Am I
right?" he whispers, hurriedly. "You loved me once; you love me now,
Louise, if I were free?"

"But you are not free."

She does not recoil, yet her very atmosphere repels him, while looking
up with those woful eyes blanching her cheek by their gathering
dar