ght her breath in a quick little sob, and pressed my hand.

"Yes," she whispered: "I promise. Good-by."

She pressed my hand again and was gone; and, as I gazed at the empty
doorway through which she had passed, I caught a glimpse of her
reflection in a glass on the landing, where she had paused for a moment
to wipe her eyes. I felt it, in a manner, indelicate to have seen her,
and turned away my head quickly; and yet I was conscious of a certain
selfish satisfaction in the sweet sympathy that her grief bespoke.

But now that she was gone a horrible sense of desolation descended on
me. Only now, by the consciousness of irreparable loss, did I begin to
realize the meaning of this passion of love that had stolen unawares
into my life. How it had glorified the present and spread a glamor of
delight over the dimly considered future: how all pleasures and
desires, hopes and ambitions, had converged upon it as a focus; how it
had stood out as the one great reality behind which the other
circumstances of life were as a background, shimmering, half seen,
immaterial and unreal. And now it was gone--lost, as it seemed, beyond
hope; and that which was left to me was but the empty frame from which
the picture had vanished.

I have no idea how long I stood rooted to the spot where she had left
me, wrapped in a dull consciousness of pain, immersed in a half-numb
reverie. Recent events flitted, dream-like, through my mind; our happy
labors in the reading-room; our first visit to the Museum; and this
present day that had opened so brightly and with such joyous promise.
One by one these phantoms of a vanished happiness came and went.
Occasional visitors sauntered into the room--but the galleries were
mostly empty that day--gazed inquisitively at my motionless figure, and
went their way. And still the dull, intolerable ache in my breast went
on, the only vivid consciousness that was left to me.

Presently I raised my eyes and met those of the portrait. The sweet,
pensive face of the old Greek settler looked out at me wistfully as
though he would offer comfort; as though he would tell me that he, too,
had known sorrow when he lived his life in the sunny Fayyum. And a
subtle consolation, like the faint scent of old rose leaves, seemed to
exhale from that friendly face that had looked on the birth of my
happiness and had seen it wither and fade. I turned away, at last,
with a silent farewell; and when I looked back, he seemed