. Turn it as she might,
the one and only thought was ever returning with crushing weight. It
seemed exhausting and yet inexhaustible.

Then ensued that numbness of the mind which is best described as the
entire absence of thought. Chaos reigned, and what lay beyond surpassed
conception. "Let what will come, I shall submit, like the beast led out
for the sacrifice, and upon whose head the uplifted axe of the high
priest is about to descend. Your destiny must be accomplished; you can
do nothing but submit without shrinking."

Irma lay thus for hours.

The great clock in the hall was ticking, and seemed to be saying:
Father--daughter; daughter--father. For hours, she could hear nothing
but the pendulum, which seemed to utter those words again and again.
She was about to give orders that the clock should be stopped, but
forebore. She tried to force herself not to hear these words, but did
not succeed. The pendulum still kept saying: Father--daughter;
daughter--father.

What had once been subject to her caprice, now ruled her.

"What have you seen of the world?" she asked herself. "A mere corner.
You must travel round the earth, and let it be a pilgrimage in which
you may escape from yourself. You must become acquainted with the whole
planet on which these creatures who call themselves men creep about;
creatures who dig and plant, preach and sing, chisel and paint, simply
to drown the thought that death awaits them all. All is drowned in
stupor--"

In imagination, she transported herself far, far away, with faithful
servants pitching their tent in the desert; and if some wild race were
to approach--While she lay there, half awake, half asleep, she heard
the sounds of the tom-tom, and fancied herself borne away on the
shoulders of others, and adorned with peacocks' wings, while savage,
dusky forms were dancing around her.

What had once been a wild day-dream now possessed her, and her brain
whirled in fancy's maddening dance.

CHAPTER VIII.

It was late at night. All were asleep. Irma gently opened the door and
slipped out.

She went to the chamber of death. A single light had been placed near
the head of the corpse, which lay in an open coffin and with a few ears
of corn in its hands. A servant who was watching by the corpse, looked
at Inna with surprise. He bowed to her, but did not speak a word. Irma
grasped her father's hand. If that hand had rested on her head to bless
h