ome to me still. Who can teach
yon love of woman as can I? Helena._' I think it was some such words as
those."

I looked at her in silence.

"You did not see that note?" she demanded. "After all, at first I meant
it only for _you_. I wanted to see you again. I did not want to lose
you. Ah, God! I was so lonely, so--so--I can not say. But you did not
find my message?"

I shook my head. "No," I said, "I did not look in the slipper. I do not
think my friend did."

"But she--that girl, did!"

"How could she have believed?"

"Ah, grand! I reverence your faith. But she is a woman! She loved you
and expected you that hour, I say. Thus comes the shock of finding you
untrue, of finding you at least a common man, after all. She is a woman.
'Tis the same fight, all the centuries, after all! Well, I did that."

"You ruined the lives of two, neither of whom had ever harmed you,
Madam."

"What is it to the tree which consumes another tree--the flower which
devours its neighbor? Was it not life?"

"You had never seen Elisabeth."

"Not until the next morning, no. Then I thought still on what you had
said. I envied her--I say, I coveted the happiness of you both. What had
the world ever given me? What had I done--what had I been--what could I
ever be? Your messenger came back with the slipper. The note was in the
shoe untouched. Your messenger had not found it, either. See, I _did_
mean it for you alone. But now seine sudden thought came to me. I tucked
it back and sent your drunken friend away with it for her--where I knew
it would be found! I did not know what would be the result. I was only
desperate over what life had done to me. I wanted to get _out_--out into
a wider and brighter world."

"Ah, Madam, and was so mean a key as this to open that world for you?
Now we all three wander, outside that world."

"No, it opened no new world for me," she said. "I was not meant for
that. But at least, I only acted as I have been treated all my life. I
knew no better then."

"I had not thought any one capable of that," said I.

"Ah, but I repented on the instant! I repented before night came. In the
twilight I got upon my knees and prayed that all my plan might go
wrong--if I could call it plan. 'Now,' I said, as the hour approached,
'they are before the priest; they stand there--she in white, perhaps; he
tall and grave. Their hands are clasped each in that of the other. They
are saying those tremendous words which may perha