just been witness, floated before
her mind's eye, awakening a train of thought so intense that she did not
know which was worse, to be there in the awful dawn dreaming over this
episode of the night, or to rise and face again the reality. The
fascination which all forbidden sights insensibly exert over the minds
of the best of us, finally prevailed, and she slowly crept to the window
to catch a parting glimpse of Mr. Sylvester's tall form hurrying blindly
from the boudoir followed by his wife's cold glance. The next minute the
exposed condition of the room seemed to catch that lady's attention, and
with an anxious look into the dull gray morn, Mrs. Sylvester drew down
the shades, and the episode was over.

Or so Paula thought; but when she was returning up stairs after her
solitary breakfast--Mrs. Sylvester was too tired and Mr. Sylvester too
much engaged to eat, as the attentive Samuel informed her--the door of
Ona's room swung ajar, and she distinctly heard her give utterance to
the following exclamation:

"What! give up this elegant home, my horses and carriage, the friends I
have had such difficulty in obtaining, and the position which I was born
to adorn? I had rather die!" And Paula feeling as if she had received
the key to the enigma of the last night's unaccountable manifestations,
was about to rush away to her own apartment, when the door swayed open
again and she heard his voice respond with hard and bitter emphasis,

"And it might be better that you should. But since you will probably
live, let it be according to your mind. I have not the courage--"

There the door swung to.

An hour from that Mr. Sylvester left the house with a small valise in
his hand, and Mrs. Sylvester dressed in her showiest costume, entered
her carriage for an early shopping excursion.

And so when Paula whispered to herself, "I did not dare to tell him; I
did not dare to tell any one, but--" she thought of those terrible
words, "Die? It might be better, perhaps, that you should!" and then
remembered the ghastly look of immeasurable horror with which a few
hours later, he staggered away from that awful burden, whose rigid lines
would never again melt into mocking curves, and to whom the morning's
wide soaring hopes, high reaching ambitions and boundless luxuries were
now no more than the shadows of a vanished world; life, love, longing,
with all their demands, having dwindled to a noisome rest between four
close planks, with dark