cowardice. Strange that I have
given you the counsel last which should have been given first! But do
not, I beseech you, lose any time in seeking her. Assure her of your
long and unwavering devotion. Constancy is the most valued word in a
true woman's vocabulary. You have staked too much happiness to lose:
you _must_ win."

"And if I lose," he said--holding up something before him which I
took to be a picture, though it was in the shape of a heart--"and if
I lose, then perish all of earth to me. But leave me only this, and
should I hold you thus, and gaze on what I have first and last and
only loved until this perishable material on which I have placed you
turn to dust, still will you be graven on a heart whose deathless love
can know no death; for a thing so holy as the love I bear you was not
made to die."

My work--now my completed work--dropped beneath my fingers, for the
last stitch was taken.

If I could not prevent his self-torture, he should not, at least,
torture me longer; and snatching the thing from his grasp, I exclaimed
as I closed my hands over it, "Now, before I return it, you must, you
_shall_, promise me that you will take the last advice I gave you; or
will you allow me to look at it, and then unseal the silent lips
and give you the prophetic little 'yes' or 'no' which a professed
physiognomist like your confidante can always read in the eye?"

"I would rather you did the last," he said; and I rose, leaned my
elbow on the corner of the mantel nearest the gaslight, rested my head
on my empty hand, so as to shade my eyes from the intensity of the
brilliant burner near me, and with the awe creeping over me with
which the old astrologers read the horoscope of the midnight stars,
I looked, and saw--only a wonderfully faithful copy of the portrait
hanging just over me, of which Mr. Tennent Tremont's confidante was
the original. I threw it from me, and burst into tears. He stood quite
near me. I thought I hated him, but my obtuse, blundering, idiotic
self more than him. I waved my hand in token either of his silence or
withdrawal, for in all my life long I, with a whole dictionary in
my mind of abusive epithets, was never more at a loss for a word. My
token was unheeded.

He only murmured softly,

I had never seen thee weeping:
I cannot leave thee now.

When you snatched my picture from me a moment ago I saw a glistening
tear of sympathy in your eye; but what are these?"

"So cruel! so ungene