face, fraught with a half-frightened,
half-wondering trouble; always the same slender, graceful figure,
but always glimmering in diamonds and satin, or spiritual in lace and
pearls, against his own rude and sordid surroundings; always silent with
parted lips, until the night wind smote some chord of recollection,
and then mingled a remembered voice with his own. For at those times
he seemed to speak also, albeit with closed lips, and an utterance
inaudible to all but her.

"Well?" he said sadly.

"Well?" the voice repeated, like a gentle echo blending with his own.

"You know it all now," he went on. "You know that it has come at
last,--all that I had worked for, prayed for; all that would have made
us happy here; all that would have saved you to me has come at last, and
all too late!"

"Too late!" echoed the voice with his.

"You remember," he went on, "the last day we were together. You remember
your friends and family would have you give me up--a penniless man. You
remember when they reproached you with my poverty, and told you that it
was only your wealth that I was seeking, that I then determined to
go away and never to return to claim you until that reproach could be
removed. You remember, dearest, how you clung to me and bade me stay
with you, even fly with you, but not to leave you alone with them. You
wore the same dress that day, darling; your eyes had the same wondering
childlike fear and trouble in them; your jewels glittered on you as
you trembled, and I refused. In my pride, or rather in my weakness and
cowardice, I refused. I came away and broke my heart among these rocks
and ledges, yet grew strong; and you, my love, YOU, sheltered and
guarded by those you loved, YOU"--He stopped and buried his face in his
hands. The night wind breathed down the chimney, and from the stirred
ashes on the hearth came the soft whisper, "I died."

"And then," he went on, "I cared for nothing. Sometimes my heart awoke
for this young partner of mine in his innocent, trustful love for a girl
that even in her humble station was far beyond his hopes, and I pitied
myself in him. Home, fortune, friends, I no longer cared for--all were
forgotten. And now they are returning to me--only that I may see the
hollowness and vanity of them, and taste the bitterness for which I
have sacrificed you. And here, on this last night of my exile, I
am confronted with only the jealousy, the doubt, the meanness and
selfishness that is to com