ed for time to conquer it.

She had expected bitter reproaches, but there were none. She had dreaded
fierce anger, but there was none. She had anticipated obduracy, but
there was none. There was nothing but intense suffering, divine
compassion, and infinite renunciation. He pitied her. He soothed her. He
defended her from the reproaches of her own conscience. He protected her
by an imposed provision that for her own sake she should not tell others
what she had told him. And then--

He laid down all the honors that his life-long toil and self-denial had
won for her sake, and he went out from his triumphs, went out from her
life--out, out into the outer darkness of oblivion, to be seen no more
of men, to be heard of no more by men. All for her sake. And before the
majesty of such infinite love, such infinite renunciation, her whole
soul bowed down in adoration. Yes, at last, in the hour of losing him
she loved him as he longed to be loved by her. She had but one desire on
earth--to be at his side. But one prayer, and that was her "vital
breath"--for his return.

She felt herself to be unworthy of the measureless love that he had
given her--that he still gave her, if he still lived, for his love had
known no shadow of turning, nor ever would suffer change.

But, oh! where in space was he? How could she reach him? How could she
make him hear the cry of her heart?

One message, like a voice from the grave, had, indeed, come to her from
him since his disappearance, but it had been sent before he left the
house; it was in the letter he had written and placed in the secret
drawer of her writing desk before he went forth that fatal night, a
"wanderer through the world's wilderness."

She had found it on that day, about three weeks after his loss, when she
had come into the parlor for the first time since her illness, and when,
left alone for a few minutes by her grandmother, she had gone to her
writing desk, and in the idleness of misery had begun carelessly,
aimlessly, to turn over her papers. In the same mood she pressed the
spring of the secret drawer, and it sprang open and projected the letter
before her. She recognized his handwriting, seized the paper and opened
it. It contained only a few words of farewell, with a prayer for her
happiness and a parting blessing.

There was no allusion made to the cause of their separation. Probably
Rule had thought of the letter falling into other hands than hers; so he
had refra