, so I cease. Thou needst not love
me any more; I care not for thy love. I hardly care for the blessed
darkness itself. Give me no sweet oblivious antidote, no precious poison
such as I once prayed for when I feared the loss of love, that it might
open to me the gate of forgetfulness, take me softly in unseen arms, and
sink with me into the during dark. No; I will, not calmly, but in utter
indifference, await the end. I do not love thee; but I can eat, and I
enjoy my wine, and my rubber of whist--'"

She broke into a dreadful laugh. It was all horribly unnatural! She
rose, and in the deepening twilight seemed to draw herself up far beyond
her height, then turned, and looked out on the shadowy last of the
sunset. Faber rose also. He felt her shudder, though she was not within
two arm's-lengths of him. He sprang to her side.

"Miss Meredith--Juliet--you have suffered! The world has been too hard
for you! Let me do all I can to make up for it! I too know what
suffering is, and my heart is bleeding for you!"

"What! are you not part of the world? Are you not her last-born--the
perfection of her heartlessness?--and will _you_ act the farce of
consolation? Is it the last stroke of the eternal mockery?"

"Juliet," he said, and once more took her hand, "I love you."

"As a man may!" she rejoined with scorn, and pulled her hand from his
grasp. "No! such love as you can give, is too poor even for me. Love you
I _will_ not. If you speak to me so again, you will drive me away. Talk
to me as you will of your void idol. Tell me of the darkness of his
dwelling, and the sanctuary it affords to poor, tormented,
specter-hunted humanity; but do not talk to me of love also, for where
your idol is, love can not be."

Faber made a gentle apology, and withdrew--abashed and hurt--vexed with
himself, and annoyed with his failure.

The moment he was gone, she cast herself on the sofa with a choked
scream, and sobbed, and ground her teeth, but shed no tear. Life had
long been poor, arid, vague; now there was not left even the luxury of
grief! Where all was loss, no loss was worth a tear.

"It were good for me that I had never been born!" she cried.

But the doctor came again and again, and looked devotion, though he
never spoke of love. He avoided also for a time any further pressing of
his opinions--talked of poetry, of science, of nature--all he said
tinged with the same sad glow. Then by degrees direct denial came up
again, and Julie