so definitely
ordained for them.

Truly the future was veiled--a sealed book for man! Had she been
permitted to dip for but an instant beneath the cover of that book, or
lift the veil ever so little, the catastrophe that had overtaken them
and the suffering it entailed might have been averted.

But no. The strange nemesis that had pursued them step by step had been
permitted to wreck their lives completely. And for what end--what
purpose? Was there no justice, no recompense for them? The answer, she
somehow felt, lay not here, but with the stars--in the great universal
scheme of things, and was quite beyond her reasoning powers.

She felt the utter hopelessness of longer struggling against the unseen,
and in that hour she became a fatalist. Better drift from day to day
without purpose, than living, behold one's dreams and ambitions come to
naught. She was like a strong, self-confident swimmer who had been
caught by the tide and was being swept irresistibly out to sea. Blurred
though her vision was, she seemed to see things clearer than she had
ever seen them before, and she somehow felt that the fate which had
overtaken her was the result of self-aggrandizement--that she in a
measure typified the passing or end of a condition out of whose decay
the new life must spring.

Submit she must, and yet a fierce resentment against all things filled
her soul. She rebelled at the apparent injustice which she felt had been
done her. Why had she, the most fit, been chosen? What had she really
done to merit such an end? She realized that her trouble was
unalterable; that it had its root in the social scheme of things and
nothing she could do could alter it. That in reality it was no fault of
hers, but the fault of her bringing up; that the world which she had
been taught to respect as a thing representing truth and beauty, all
that is best in man, was only a mocking illusion.

The injustice of it amazed, appalled, stunned her. She seemed to think
and move like one in a dream, struggling with shadowy, intangible forces
with which she was incapable to cope. The thought that it was not her
fault only added to her bitterness and agony, and she longed for
death--the death that knows no awakening--to be blotted out utterly, and
forever. Her life was devoid of hope, there was nothing to look forward
to, the future had become a blank.

A low moan, in which was expressed the despair and agony of men since
the beginning of time, escap