the flowers in her face even stronger than before,
she clutched her hair in her fingers and pulled it so violently that she
actually groaned with the pain she gave herself.

The question as to whether her hair was less abundant and beautiful than
her sister's suddenly occurred to her, and like a flash in the darkness
the wish shot through her soul that she could fling Arsinoe to the
ground by the hair, with the hand which was now hurting herself.

That perfume! that horrible perfume!

She could bear it no longer. She stood up on her uninjured foot, and
with very short steps she dragged herself half crying to the window,
and flung the nosegay with the great jar of burnt clay down on to
the ground. The vessel was broken.--It had cost poor Hannah many
hardly-saved pieces not long since. Selene stood on one foot, leaning,
to recover herself, against the right-hand post of the window-opening,
and there she could hear more distinctly than from her couch, the voice
of the waves as they broke on the stone quay just behind dame Hannah's
little house. The child of the Lochias was familiar with their tones,
but the clashing and gurgling of the cool, moist element against the
stones had never affected her before as they did now. Her fevered blood
was on fire, her foot was burning, her head was hot, and hatred seemed
to consume her soul as in a slow fire; she felt as if every wave that
broke upon the seawall was calling out to her: "I am cool, I am moist, I
can extinguish the flame that is consuming you. I can refresh and revive
you."

What had the world to offer her but new torment and new misery? But
the sea--the blue dark sea was wide, and cold, and deep, and its waves
promised her in insidious tones to relieve her at once of the rage of
her fever, and of the burden of her life. Selene did not pause, did not
reflect; she remembered neither the children whom she had so long
cared for as a mother, nor her father, whose comfort and support she
was--vague voices in her brain seemed to be whispering to her that the
world was evil and cruel, and the abode of all the torment and care that
gnawed at her heart. She felt as if she had been plunged to the temples
in a pool of fire, and, like some poor wretch whose garments have been
caught by the flames, she had an instinct to fly to the water, at the
bottom of which she might hope to find the fulfilment of her utmost
longing, sweet cold death, in which all is forgotten.

Groaning and