ighted by
tunnels in the solid rock and covered over with strongest glasses which
the sea cannot break. Imagine countless electric lamps lighting this
labyrinth until it seems sometimes like a fairy palace. Say that your
drawing-room is a cave, whose walls are of jewels and whose floor is of
jasper. Night and day yon hear the sea, the moaning winds, the breaking
billows. It is another world here, like to nothing that any man has
seen or ever will see. The people of a city could live in this place
and yet leave room for others. My own rooms are the first you come to;
lofty as a church, dim as one, yet furnished with all that a woman
could desire. Yes, indeed, all I can desire. In my dressing-room are
gowns from Douse's and hats from Alphonsine's, jewels from the Rue de
la Paix, furs from Canada--all there to call back my life of two short
years ago, that laughing life of Paris and the cities when I was free,
and all the world my own, and only my girlhood to regret! Now I
remember it all as one bright day in years of gathering night.
Everything that I want, my husband says, shall be mine. I ask for
liberty, but that is denied to me. It is too late to speak of promises
or to believe. If I would condone it all; if I would but say to Edmond,
"Yes, your life shall be my life, your secrets shall be mine; go, get
riches, I will never ask you how." If I would say to him, "I will shut
out from my memory all that I have seen on this island; I will forget
the agony of those who have died here; I will never hear again the
cries of drowning people, will never see hands outstretched above the
waves, or the dead that come in on the dreadful tides; I will forget
all this, and say, 'I love you, I believe in you'"--ah, how soon would
liberty be won! But I am dumb; I cannot answer. I shall die on Ken's
Island, saying, "God help those who perish here!"

May 14th.--Three days have passed in the shelter, and Clair-de-Lune,
who comes to me every day, brings no good news of Jasper. "He is on
the heights," he says; "if food were there he might live through the
sleep-time." My husband knows that he is there, but does not speak of
it. Yesterday, about sunset, I went up to the gallery on the reef,
where the island is visible, and I saw the fog lying about it like a
pall. It is an agony to know that those dear to you are suffering,
perhaps dying, there! I cannot hide my eyes from others; they read my
story truly. "Your friends will be clever if they