ouchsafed her; at moments she knew
the joy of beautiful things. This was in spring-time. Living in the
great seaport, she could easily come within sight of the blue line where
heaven and ocean met, and that symbol of infinity stirred once more the
yearnings for boundless joy which in bygone days she had taught herself
to accept as her creed. Supposing that her father had still knowledge of
the life she led, would it make him happy to know that she had deprived
herself of every pleasure, had for his sake ruined a future which might
have been so fair? Not thus do we show piety to the dead; rather in
binding our brows with every flower our hands may cull, and in drinking
sunlight as long as the west keeps for us one gleam.

She had destroyed herself. Joy could arise to her from but one source,
and that was stopped for ever. For it never came to Emily as the
faintest whisper that other love than Wilfrid's might bless her life.
That was constancy which nothing could shake; in this she would never
fall from the ideal she had set before herself. She no longer tried to
banish thoughts of what she had lost; Wilfrid was a companion at all
hours far more real than the people with whom she had to associate. She
had, alas, destroyed his letters she had destroyed the book in which she
wrote the secrets of her heart that he might some day read them. The
lack of a single thing that had come to her from him made the more
terribly real the severance of his life from hers. She anguished without
hope.

Then there came to her the knowledge that her bodily strength was
threatened by disease. She had fainting fits, and in the comfort
administered by those about her she read plainly what was meant to be
concealed. At times this was a relief; at least she might hope to be
spared long years of weary desolation, and death, come when he might,
would be a friend. In other hours the all but certainty of her doom was
a thought so terrible that reason well-nigh failed before it. Was there
no hope for her for ever, nothing but the grave to rest her tired heart?
Why had fate dealt with her so cruelly? She looked round and saw none
upon whom had fallen a curse so unrelieved.

At last the desire to go once more to the south of England grew
overpowering. If she could live in London, she felt it might console her
to feel that she was near Wilfrid; he would not seem, as now, in a world
utterly remote. Perchance she might one day even see him. If she had
k