e his sweetheart's
room was, and stayed there for hours.

"One night, when it was darker than usual, and he was hurrying lest he
should be later than the time agreed on, he knocked up against a piece of
furniture in the anteroom and upset it. It so happened that the girl's
mother had not gone to sleep, either because she had a sick headache, or
else be cause she had sat up late over some novel, and, frightened at
that unusual noise which disturbed the silence of the house, she jumped
out of bed, opened the door, saw some one indistinctly running away and
keeping close to the wall, and, immediately thinking that there were
burglars in the house, she aroused her husband and the servants by her
frantic screams. The unfortunate man understood the situation; and,
seeing what a terrible fix he was in, and preferring to be taken for a
common thief to dishonoring his adored one's name, he ran into the
drawing-room, felt on the tables and what-nots, filled his pockets at
random with valuable bric-a-brac, and then cowered down behind the grand
piano, which barred the corner of a large room.

"The servants, who had run in with lighted candles, found him, and,
overwhelming him with abuse, seized him by the collar and dragged him,
panting and apparently half dead with shame and terror, to the nearest
police station. He defended himself with intentional awkwardness when he
was brought up for trial, kept up his part with the most perfect
self-possession and without any signs of the despair and anguish that he
felt in his heart, and, condemned and degraded and made to suffer
martyrdom in his honor as a man and a soldier--he was an
officer--he did not protest, but went to prison as one of those
criminals whom society gets rid of like noxious vermin.

"He died there of misery and of bitterness of spirit, with the name of
the fair-haired idol, for whom he had sacrificed himself, on his lips, as
if it had been an ecstatic prayer, and he intrusted his will 'to the
priest who administered extreme unction to him, and requested him to give
it to me. In it, without mentioning anybody, and without in the least
lifting the veil, he at last explained the enigma, and cleared himself of
those accusations the terrible burden of which he had borne until his
last breath.

"I have always thought myself, though I do not know why, that the girl
married and had several charming children, whom she brought up with the
austere strictness and in the seriou