ng restlessly at her heart. The misty mornings, the pale,
bright sky, the low clouds scudding under the gray dome of heaven,
fitted with the moods of her soul-sickness. Her heart did not contract,
was neither more nor less seared, rather it seemed as if her youth, in
its full blossom, was slowly turned to stone by an anguish intolerable
because it was barren. She suffered through herself and for herself. How
could it end save in self-absorption? Ugly torturing thoughts probed
her conscience. Candid self-examination pronounced that she was double,
there were two selves within her; a woman who felt and a woman who
thought; a self that suffered and a self that could fain suffer no
longer. Her mind traveled back to the joys of childish days; they had
gone by, and she had never known how happy they were. Scenes crowded up
in her memory as in a bright mirror glass, to demonstrate the deception
of a marriage which, all that it should be in the eyes of the world, was
in reality wretched. What had the delicate pride of young womanhood
done for her--the bliss foregone, the sacrifices made to the world?
Everything in her expressed love, awaited love; her movements still were
full of perfect grace; her smile, her charm, were hers as before; why?
she asked herself. The sense of her own youth and physical loveliness
no more affected her than some meaningless reiterated sound. Her very
beauty had grown intolerable to her as a useless thing. She shrank
aghast from the thought that through the rest of life she must remain an
incomplete creature; had not the inner self lost its power of receiving
impressions with that zest, that exquisite sense of freshness which is
the spring of so much of life's gladness? The impressions of the future
would for the most part be effaced as soon as received, and many of the
thoughts which once would have moved her now would move her no more.

After the childhood of the creature dawns the childhood of the heart;
but this second infancy was over, her lover had taken it down with him
into the grave. The longings of youth remained; she was young yet; but
the completeness of youth was gone, and with that lost completeness the
whole value and savor of life had diminished somewhat. Should she not
always bear within her the seeds of sadness and mistrust, ready to
grow up and rob emotion of its springtide of fervor? Conscious she must
always be that nothing could give her now the happiness so longed for,
that seem