omise, yet you wear not
loving looks. Your eye is vacant--your heart, it beats sadly and
hurriedly beneath my hand, as if there were gloomy and vexatious
thoughts within."

"And should I not be sad, Mark, and should you not be sad? Gloom and
sorrow befit our situations alike; though for you I feel more than for
myself. I think not so much of our parting, as of your misfortune in
having partaken of this crime. There is to me but little occasion for
grief in the temporary separation which I am sure will precede our final
union. But this dreadful deed, Mark--it is this that makes me sad. The
knowledge that you, whom I thought too gentle wantonly to crush the
crawling insect, should have become the slayer of men--of innocent men,
too--makes my heart bleed within, and my eyes fill; and when I think of
it, as indeed I now think of little else, and feel that its remorse and
all its consequences must haunt you for many years, I almost think, with
my father, that it would be better we should see each other no more. I
think I could see you depart, knowing that it was for ever, without a
tear, were this sin not upon your head."

"Your words are cruel, Kate; but you can not speak to my spirit in
language more severe than it speaks momentarily to itself. I never knew
anything of punishment before; and the first lesson is a bitter one.
Your words touch me but little now, as the tree, when the axe has once
girdled it, has no feeling for any further stroke. Forbear then, dear
Kate, as you love yourself. Brood not upon a subject that brings pain
with it to your own spirit, and has almost ceased, except in its
consequences, to operate upon mine. Let us now speak of those things
which concern you nearly, and me not a little--of the only thing, which,
besides this deed of death, troubles my thought at this moment. Let us
speak of our future hope--if hope there may be for me, after the stern
sentence which your lips uttered in part even now."

"It was for you--for your safety, believe me, Mark, that I spoke; my own
heart was wrung with the language of my lips--the language of my cooler
thought. I spoke only for your safety and not for myself. Could--I again
repeat--could this deed be undone--could you be free from the reproach
and the punishment, I would be content, though the strings of my heart
cracked with its own doom, to forego all claim upon you--to give you
up--to give up my own hope of happiness for ever."

Her words were passio