thing at first; but if each will try, for the sake of the other, I
believe we can yet attain comparative content, if not positive
happiness."

"Content! happiness!"

The words were hissed out with a fierceness of passion that startled
him, and caused him to regard her anxiously.

"Happiness!" she repeated. "Ha! ha! What mockery in the sound of that
word from your lips, after what has occurred to-day!"

"I know that you have cause to be both grieved and angry, Anna," said
Gerald Goddard, humbly; "but let us both put the past behind us--let
us wipe out all old scores, and from this day begin a new life."

"'Begin a new life' upon a heap of ashes, without one spark among them
to ignite the smallest flame!" was the mocking rejoinder. Then, with a
burst of agony, she continued: "Oh, God! if you had taken a dagger
and stabbed me to death in that room to-day, you could not have slain
me more effectually than by the words you have uttered. Begin a new
life with you, after your confessions, your pleadings and
protestations to Isabel Stewart? Heaven! Never! I hate you! hate you;
hate you! with all the strength of my Italian blood, and warn
you--beware! And now, begone!"

The woman looked like a maniac as she poured this wild torrent upon
him, and the man saw that she was in no mood to be reasoned with or to
consider any subject; that it would be wiser to wait until the
fierceness of her anger had spent itself.

He had broached the matter of their future relations, thus giving her
something to think of, and now he would leave her to meditate upon it
by herself; perhaps, in a few days, she would be in a more reasonable
frame of mind, and look at the subject from a different point of view.

"Very well, Anna," he said, as he arose, "I will obey you. I do not
pretend to claim that I have not given you cause to feel aggrieved in
many respects; but, as I have already said, that is past. I simply ask
you to do what I also will do--put all the old life behind us, and
begin over again. I realize that we cannot discuss the question to any
purpose now--we are both too wrought up to think or talk calmly, so I
will leave you to rest, and we will speak of this at another time. Can
I do anything for you before I go?--or perhaps you would like your
maid sent to you?"

"No," she said, briefly, and not once having removed her wild eyes
from his face while he was speaking.

He bowed, and passed out of the room, softly shutting the door