ce. Before I saw him no man had ever made any
impression on me; but I hardly knew how dearly I loved him till a month
after our marriage took place. I only learnt to appreciate him fully
during the short period of our union, and my love grew into a passion
when I had lost him for ever. Had you known him, you would have become
friends; he never had an enemy."

Everhard had risen and was pacing the room with noiseless steps. He
stopped before the table and took up a volume which projected from a
travelling bag. They were Lenau's poems. On the fly leaf was inscribed
the name of Lucille.

"Does this poet please you?" asked the doctor.--

"I hardly know whether he repels, or attracts me; and although I
generally have a clear perception in such things, yet I cannot quite
discover in his thoughts, what is genuine and what is artificial. He
suffered much, yet it often appears to me, as if by continually
irritating them, he purposely re-opened his wounds. I hardly know why I
took this book on my journey; perhaps as a sort of consolation."

"You seek consolation with a poet so weary of life?"

"Why not? _He_ died mad. When I think of that death, the grief for my
husband's seems easier to bear, for what a glorious death was granted
to _him_! Young, loved by all, he died heroically for his country! I
carry his image undefaced in my heart, not distorted by illness, and
the last agony, nor estranged from me by insanity. How dreadful must it
not be to see one dear to us deprived of his senses. Do you not feel
the same?"

He was silent for a moment, and then replied by another question: "So
you would have thought the death of your husband desirable, if he had
been doomed to life long insanity?"

"Spare me the answer. I cannot give you one truthfully, without pain."

"So much the better," he said. She did not understand him. A few
minutes later he left the room.

He returned an hour after midnight, and insisted on relieving the
mother from her watch by the sickbed. She could not resist his
imperative manner, and only begged him to let her, and the nurse,
relieve him alternately. He promised to do so; and this time kept his
promise. In the morning when Lucille awoke, she found the nurse alone,
and heard that the doctor lay on a straw mattress in the tap-room to be
near at hand in case of need.

* * * * *

A week had passed since these events, and Everhard again sat in his
little room a