USE" (mark that BECAUSE!) "thou hast hearkened unto the voice of
thy wife" (or thy WOMAN, whoever she be), "and hast eaten of the tree
of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it" (the tree
or fruit being the evil suggested FIRST to man by woman), "cursed is
the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of
thy life!"

True enough! The curse is upon all who trust woman too far--the sorrow
upon all who are beguiled by her witching flatteries. Of what avail her
poor excuse in the ancient story--"The serpent beguiled me and I did
eat!" Had she never listened she could not have been beguiled. The
weakness, the treachery, was in herself, and is there still. Through
everything the bitterness of it runs. The woman tempts--the man
yields--and the gate of Eden--the Eden of a clear conscience and an
untrammeled soul, is shut upon them. Forever and ever the Divine
denunciation re-echoes like muttering thunder through the clouds of
passing generations; forever and ever we unconsciously carry it out in
our own lives to its full extent till the heart grows sick and the
brain weary, and we long for the end of it all, which is death--death,
that mysterious silence and darkness at which we sometimes shudder,
wondering vaguely--Can it be worse than life?

CHAPTER XIX.

More than ten days had passed since Stella's death. Her mother had
asked me to see to the arrangements for the child's funeral, declaring
herself too ill to attend to anything. I was glad enough to accede to
her request, for I was thus able to avoid the Romani vault as a place
of interment. I could not bear to think of the little cherished body
being laid to molder in that terrific place where I had endured such
frantic horrors. Therefore, informing all whom it concerned that I
acted under the countess's orders, I chose a pretty spot in the open
ground of the cemetery, close to the tree where I had heard the
nightingale singing in my hour of supreme misery and suffering. Here my
little one was laid tenderly to rest in warm mother-earth, and I had
sweet violets and primroses planted thickly all about the place, while
on the simple white marble cross that marked the spot I had the words
engraved--

"Una Stella svanita," [Footnote: A vanished star]

adding the names of her parents and the date of her birth and death.
Since all this had been done I had visited my wife several times. She
was always at home to me, though of