guish of seeing that woman his wife! O my God! the
world is not wide enough to hold us both. Take her, or else call me
speedily hence. I am not fit to die, but I shall never be better, if I
am doomed to witness this marriage. I would sooner go down to
perdition now, than live to see that thing of horror. Of two hells, I
choose that which takes me farthest from her."

For the first time in her life she felt that the hours were flying,
that the day of doom was rushing to meet her, and she shuddered when
one after another the constellations slipped softly and solemnly down
the sky, and vanished behind the dim shadowy outline of the western
hills. Gradually the moon sank so low that the sea could no longer
reflect her beams, and as the mighty waste of waters slowly darkened,
and the wind stiffened, and the song of the surf swelled like a rising
requiem, the girl felt that all nature was preparing to mourn with her
over the burial of her only hope of earthly peace.

If Mrs. Gerome died, a quiet future stretched before the orphan, and
she could bear to live without the love which she had the grim
satisfaction of knowing brightened no other woman's life.

The happiness of the man for whom she almost impiously prayed, was a
matter of little importance compared with the ease of her own heart;
and she had yet to learn that the welfare and peace of the object she
loved so selfishly would one day become paramount to all other aims
and considerations. That pure and sublime spirit of self-abnegation
which immolates every hope and wish that is at variance with the
happiness of the beloved had not yet been born in Salome's fiery
nature; and she cared little for the anguish that might be Dr. Grey's
portion, provided her own heart could be spared the pang of witnessing
his wedded bliss.

Through the trees, she could see the steady light of the lamp that
burned in the room where the sick woman lay, and so she watched and
waited, shivering in the shadow that fell over earth and ocean just
before the breaking of the new day.

Along the eastern horizon, the white fires of rising constellations
paled and flickered and seemed to die, as a gray light stole up behind
them; and the gray grew pearly, and the pearly opaline, and ere long
the sky crimsoned, and the sea reddened until its waves were like ruby
wine or human gore.

In the radiant dawn of that day which would decide the earthly
destinies of three beings, Salome saw Dr. Grey comin