nce were eminently
interesting and lovely; and though the bloom was gone forever, the
beauty, which not even death could wholly have despoiled, remained to
triumph over debility, misfortune, and disease.

She approached the student, and laid her hand upon his shoulder.

"Dearest!" said he, tenderly yet reproachfully, "yet up, and the hour so
late and yourself so weak? Fie, I must learn to scold you."

"And how," answered the intruder, "how could I sleep or rest while you
are consuming your very life in those thankless labours?"

"By which," interrupted the writer, with a faint smile, "we glean our
scanty subsistence."

"Yes," said the wife (for she held that relation to the student), and
the tears stood in her eyes, "I know well that every morsel of bread,
every drop of water, is wrung from your very heart's blood, and I--I am
the cause of all; but surely you exert yourself too much, more than can
be requisite? These night damps, this sickly and chilling air, heavy
with the rank vapours of the coming morning, are not suited to thoughts
and toils which are alone sufficient to sear your mind and exhaust your
strength. Come, my own love, to bed; and yet first come and look upon
our child, how sound she sleeps! I have leaned over her for the last
hour, and tried to fancy it was you whom I watched, for she has learned
already your smile and has it even when she sleeps."

"She has cause to smile," said the husband, bitterly.

"She has, for she is yours! and even in poetry and humble hopes, that is
an inheritance which may well teach her pride and joy. Come, love, the
air is keen, and the damp rises to your forehead,--yet stay, till I have
kissed it away."

"Mine own love," said the student, as he rose and wound his arm round
the slender waist of his wife, "wrap your shawl closer over your bosom,
and let us look for one instant upon the night. I cannot sleep till I
have slaked the fever of my blood: the air has nothing of coldness in
its breath for me."

And they walked to the window and looked forth. All was hushed and still
in the narrow street; the cold gray clouds were hurrying fast along the
sky; and the stars, weak and waning in their light, gleamed forth at
rare intervals upon the mute city, like expiring watch-lamps of the
dead.

They leaned out and spoke not; but when they looked above upon the
melancholy heavens, they drew nearer to each other, as if it were their
natural instinct to do so whenever the wo