the true sympathy of some one, even a little
near to us, when we ourselves are suffering. The people we do not want
shower cards of condolence on us, and carriage-loads of flowers on the
poor dead thing; the ones who could be of some help to the tortured soul
are afraid to speak; the very delicacy of kind-heartedness in them,
which makes us wish they would come, makes them stay away.

I hope Isaacs will not send for me, poor fellow.

If he does, what shall I say? God help me.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XIV.

The hours came and went, and though worn out with the exertions of the
past days, and with the emotions of the morning, I lay in my rooms,
unable to sleep even for a moment. I went down once or twice to Isaacs'
rooms to know whether he had returned, but he had not, nor had any one
heard from him. At last the evening shadows crept stealthily up,
darkening first one room, then another, until there was not light enough
to read by. Then I dropped my book and went out to breathe the cold air
on the verandah. Wearily the hours went by, and still there was no sign
of my friend.

Towards eleven o'clock the moon, now waning, once more rose above the
hills and shed her light across the lawn, splendid still, but with the
first tinge of melancholy that clouds her departing glory. Exhausted
nature asserted herself, and chilled to the bone I went to bed, and, at
last, to sleep.

I slept peacefully at first, but soon the events that had come over my
life began to weave themselves in wild disharmony through my restful
visions, and the events that were to come cast their lengthening shadows
before them. The world of past, present, and future thoughts, came into
my soul, distorted, without perspective, nothing to help me to discern
the good from the evil, the suffering gone and long-forgotten from the
pain in store. The triumph of discrepancy over waking reason, the
fancied victories of the sleep-dulled intellect over the outrageous
discord of the wakeful imagination. I passed a most miserable night. It
seemed rest to wake, until I was awake, and then it seemed rest to sleep
again, until my eyes were closed. At last it came, no dream this time;
Isaacs stood by my bed-side in the gray of the morning, himself grayer
than the soft neutral-tinted dawn. It was a terrible moment to me,
though I had expected it since yesterday. I felt like the condemned
criminal in France, who does not know the day or