on her brain--or did not touch her
at all. She would love the picturesque in life, though her own tastes
were so simple and fine. Imagination would beset her path with dangers;
it would be to her, with her beauty, a fatal gift, a danger to herself
and others. She would have power, and feeling it, womanlike, would use
it, dissipating her emotions, paying out the sweetness of her soul,
till one day a dramatic move, a strong picturesque personality like
Doltaire's, would catch her from the moorings of her truth, and the
end must be tragedy to her. Doltaire! Doltaire! The name burnt into my
brain. Some prescient quality in me awaked, and I saw her the sacrifice
of her imagination, of the dramatic beauty of her nature, my enemy her
tyrant and destroyer. He would leave nothing undone to achieve his end,
and do nothing that would not in the end poison her soul and turn her
very glories into miseries. How could she withstand the charm of his
keen knowledge of the world, the fascination of his temperament, the
alluring eloquence of his frank wickedness? And I should rather a
million times see her in her grave than passed through the atmosphere of
his life.

This may seem madness, selfish and small; but after-events went far to
justify my fears and imaginings, for behind there was a love, an aching,
absorbing solicitude. I can not think that my anxiety was all vulgar
smallness then.

I called him by coarse names, as I tramped up and down my dungeon; I
cursed him; impotent contempt was poured out on him; in imagination I
held him there before me, and choked him till his eyes burst out and
his body grew limp in my arms. The ring of fire in my head scorched and
narrowed till I could have shrieked in agony. My breath came short and
labored, and my heart felt as though it were in a vise and being clamped
to nothing. For an instant, also, I broke out in wild bitterness against
Alixe. She had said she would save me, and yet in an hour or less I
should be dead. She had come to me last night ah--true; but that was in
keeping with her dramatic temperament; it was the drama of it that had
appealed to her; and to-morrow she would forget me, and sink her fresh
spirit in the malarial shadows of Doltaire's.

In my passion I thrust my hand into my waistcoat and unconsciously drew
out something. At first my only feeling was that my hand could clench
it, but slowly a knowledge of it travelled to my brain, as if through
clouds and vapours. Now I