Lucy's revelation which had forced upon Minola a
knowledge of her own feelings. This had perhaps so sent conviction home
as to render illusion or self-deception impossible any longer, but it
was not that which first told her of her weakness. That had long been
more and more making itself known to her. It was plain to her now that
since the first day when she stood upon the bridge with him in the park,
and looked into the canal, she had loved him. "Oh, why did I not know it
then?" she asked wearily of herself. "I could have avoided him--have
never seen him again--and it might so have come to nothing, and at least
we should not have to meet."

Amid all her pain of the night and the morning, one question was ever
repeating itself, "Will this last?" That the fever which burned her was
love--genuine love--the regular old love of the romances and the
poets--she could not doubt. She knew it because it was so new a
feeling. Had she walked among a fever-stricken population, refusing to
believe in the danger of infection, and satisfied that the fearless and
the wise were safe, and had she suddenly felt the strange pains and
unfamiliar heats, and found the senses beginning to wander, she would
have known that this was fever. The pangs of death are new to all alike
when they come, but those who are about to die are conscious--even in
their last moments of consciousness--that this new summons has the one
awful meaning. So did Minola know only too well what the meaning was of
this new pain. "Will it last?" was her cry to herself. "Shall I have to
go through life with this torture always to bear? Is it true that women
have to bear this for years and years--that some of them never get over
it? Oh, I shall never get over it--never, never!" she cried out in
bitterness. She was very bitter now against herself and fate. She did
not feel that it is better to love vainly than not at all. Indeed, such
consoling conviction belongs to the poet who philosophizes on love, or
to the disappointed lover who is already beginning to be consoled. It
does not do much good to any one in the actual hour of pain. Minola
cordially and passionately wished that she had not loved, or seen any
one whom she could love. She was full of wrath and scorn for herself,
and believed herself humbled and shamed. Her whole life was crossed;
her quiet was all gone; she was now doomed to an existence of perpetual
self-constraint and renunciation, and even deception. She had