er turned away into one of the broad walks that divided the
flower-bordered lawns.

Thin, almost emaciated, she appeared far taller than when last she
swept across the stage, and having thrown back her veil, a startling
and painful alteration was visible in the face that had so completely
captivated fastidious Paris.

Pallid as Mors, the cheeks had lost their symmetrical oval, were
hollow, and under the sunken eyes clung dusky circles that made them
appear unnaturally large, and almost Dantesque in their mournful
gleaming. Even the lips seemed shrunken, changed in their classic
contour; and the ungloved hand that clasped the folds of lace across
her bosom was wasted, wan, diaphanous.

That brilliant Parisian career, which had opened so auspiciously,
closed summarily during the second week of her engagement in darkness
that threatened to prove the unlifting shadow of death. The severe
tax upon her emotional nature, the continued intense strain on her
nerves, as night after night she played to crowded houses--shunning
as if it contained a basilisk, the sight of that memorable box--where
she felt, rather than saw, that a pair of violet eyes steadily
watched her, all this had conquered even her powerful will, her stern
resolute purpose, and one fatal evening the long-tried woman was
irretrievably vanquished.

The _role_ was "Queen Katherine," and the first premonitory faintness
rendered her voice uneven, as, kneeling before King Henry, the
unhappy wife uttered her appeal:

..."Alas, sir,
In what have I offended you? What cause
Hath my behaviour given to your displeasure,
That thus you should proceed to put me off,
And take your good grace from me? Heaven witness,
I have been to you a true and humble wife."...

As the play proceeded, she was warned by increasing giddiness, and a
tremulousness that defied her efforts to control it; and she rushed
on toward the close, fighting desperately with physical prostration.

Upon the last speech of the dying and disowned wife she had safely
entered, and a few more minutes would end her own fierce struggle
with numbing faintness, and bring her succour in rest. But swiftly
the blazing footlights began to dance like witches of Walpurgis night
on Brocken heights; now they flickered, suddenly grew blue, then
black, an icy darkness as from some ghoul-haunted crypt seized her,
and while she threw out her hand