ot shrink before death
itself but die beneath the sword of Damocles; sometimes by the crushing
of generous impulses beneath an icy hand, by the cold rebuffal of her
kisses, by a stern command of silence, first imposed and then as often
blamed; by inward tears that dared not flow but stayed within the heart;
in short, by all the bitterness and tyranny of convent rule, hidden
to the eyes of the world under the appearance of an exalted motherly
devotion. She gratified her mother's vanity before strangers, but
she dearly paid in private for this homage. When, believing that by
obedience and gentleness she had softened her mother's heart, she opened
hers, the tyrant only armed herself with the girl's confidence. No spy
was ever more traitorous and base. All the pleasures of girlhood, even
her fete days, were dearly purchased, for she was scolded for her gaiety
as much as for her faults. No teaching and no training for her position
had been given in love, always with sarcastic irony. She was not angry
against her mother; in fact she blamed herself for feeling more terror
than love for her. "Perhaps," she said, dear angel, "these severities
were needful; they had certainly prepared her for her present life." As
I listened it seemed to me that the harp of Job, from which I had drawn
such savage sounds, now touched by the Christian fingers gave forth the
litanies of the Virgin at the foot of the cross.

"We lived in the same sphere before we met in this," I said; "you coming
from the east, I from the west."

She shook her head with a gesture of despair.

"To you the east, to me the west," she replied. "You will live happy, I
must die of pain. Life is what we make of it, and mine is made forever.
No power can break the heavy chain to which a woman is fastened by this
ring of gold--the emblem of a wife's purity."

We knew we were twins of one womb; she never dreamed of a
half-confidence between brothers of the same blood. After a short sigh,
natural to pure hearts when they first open to each other, she told me
of her first married life, her deceptions and disillusions, the rebirth
of her childhood's misery. Like me, she had suffered under trifles;
mighty to souls whose limpid substance quivers to the least shock, as
a lake quivers on the surface and to its utmost depths when a stone is
flung into it. When she married she possessed some girlish savings; a
little gold, the fruit of happy hours and repressed fancies. These, in
a