Mal Moulée: A Novel

He was by her side within an hour. She reached out her arms, and pillowed her flushed face on his breast, weeping softly.

"Oh, Love!" she murmured. "I have felt so lonely, so deserted these last days. I think I have realized just what life would be without you: it would be an agony of desolation. I could not live."

Percy's heart writhed within him, as he stroked the beautiful head and soothed her with kind words. How could he ever stab that loving heart by telling her the change that had come over him—a change as thorough as it was sudden; a change that was the dawn of a possible new life for him.

"I cannot. It is too late; it would be more cruel than murder," he said to himself, and he drew Dolores into his arms, and comforted her as he would have comforted a sick child. She asked no explanation of his absence, and he made none.

Within a week he had carried her away to a quiet country resort, where she soon regained her health. But during her illness, there came to her, through the clairvoyant power of a loving heart, the knowledge that some mysterious change had taken place in Percy. He was kind, oh, very kind; so careful of her bodily comfort, so solicitous for her welfare.

And yet—what was it?

"Is any thing troubling you?" she asked him one day. "You do not seem like yourself."

"There are some business matters which annoy me," he said, evading her eyes. "My South American ventures are a failure—that is all, my dear, save a miserable lassitude and sideache, which Dr. Sydney says is due to a touch of malaria."

But she knew better.

They returned to New York, and then Percy was guilty of an act of rash folly, for a man who desired to escape a complication of troubles.

He sent Dolores a message, saying he was called out of town suddenly. Then he took the train for Centerville. It was Saturday afternoon, and he told himself, that he would merely attend divine service in the morning, listen to Helena's voice once more, and come away without being seen by any one.

But in his heart, he knew that this was impossible. And when Mrs. Griffith approached him after service, and urged him to accompany them home, and dine with them, he went, without offering one objection.

Helena greeted him with simple cordiality, and entertained him with the easy grace so natural to her. He was at peace with himself, in her presence, for the first time since he last saw her.

"How strange it is!" he mused, "I have seen the most beautiful women in the world, I have listened to the most famous singers; and yet, I am moved by the presence and voice of a simple village maiden as I have never been moved in my life before."

A sudden impulse came over him to tell her his story, to ask her advice, as they sat alone in the afternoon. Then he hesitated: what if she turned from him, shocked, angry, horrified?—so he only said:

"I wish you would call some of your wise spirits, Miss Helena, and ask them to read me my future. I am in trouble—a trouble out of which I can see no pathway. I wish good angels would tell me how it is to end."

"But that is not the province of spirits," Helena answered. "People often make the great mistake of supposing that the departed know all that is to happen to us while we remain upon earth. The fact is, they know very little about it, and are too busily employed to give their time to finding out the future for us."

"But if their lives are so exalted and their vision so broad, I see no reason why they should not know."

"You will see when you come to think of it sensibly," Helena continued, with a smile. "Their lives are, compared to our own just as much broader, more useful and more important, as the lives of great thinkers and philosophers and reformers, are greater than the lives of little children. Shakespeare, Carlyle, Lincoln, George Eliot, all were wonderful people who grasped almost the whole of the universe with their minds. Yet not one of them, were they all alive to-day, could foretell the future life of Mrs. Griffith's little child, yonder. Not one could say what was to occur to him in the next ten years. They could help him by their example, and strengthen him by their philosophy, but no more, great as they were. Well, now, the spirits of the dead regard us as children at school. They are far beyond us, in knowledge and usefulness; they are ever ready to strengthen and encourage us, but they cannot predict events for us. There are some, no doubt, who were gifted with clairvoyance here, who keep the power there. But such spirits are often too busy to come at our call. And they know, too, that it is better for us to depend upon ourselves in a great measure. It is through self-dependence that we develope our individuality, and become fitted for the labors of this world and the next."

"Then you think the future life is one of labor?" Percy asked.

"It is one of usefulness and progression, certainly, or it is not worth living," she answered. "Who would want to live at all, if we never advanced in any way? And the beauty of that new life is, that every particle of progress we have made here, even if it has brought us no reward, will enable us to take an advanced place there. So soon as we are out of the body, we shall realize this in all its satisfying truth. Every hard struggle on earth, every conquered temptation, every sorrow, every trial endured, every labor well performed, we shall see has its splendid reward in fitting us for the most exalted position in that new life. Every particle of love and affection we have bestowed on objects which seemed to make a poor return or no return here, will be given to us in ten-fold strength and sweetness there. The more we love humanity—the more we shall be loved and the wider will be our capabilities of wonderful labors in the spirit world. The two most God-like emotions given to mortals to experience, are love and sympathy. If we give our love with prodigality, and sympathize with every human being who crosses our pathway in life, it really matters very little whether we are loved in return, or whether the world thanks us for our sympathy, or not. It is the act of loving and sympathizing which shapes the soul. And when the body falls away, the spirit that has given its affections and sympathies freely on earth will stand forth, a mighty and beautiful Power in the New Life, no matter what its creed or belief in the earth life has been."

Percy drew a long deep breath. Again the delicate curtain was drawn over her dark eyes, softening and half concealing their sombre splendor. Again he felt that subtle warmth and fragrance emanating from her person, and was thrilled and magnetized by it.

"It is no earthly odor," he said. "It is the perfume of her soul."

"How clear and beautiful you make it all seem!" he said, aloud. "To listen to your words makes one long for death. And yet, if our lives have been selfish, immoral, unworthy, if we have wasted our time in mere earthly or sensual pleasures, how terrible must be the consciousness of it to the freed spirit."

"Yes, terrible, indeed. There comes the real hell of the suffering conscience. The soul will see its fearful mistake, and see how long and dreary is the pathway before it. Yet, it will realize, that God has left that lonely path open for it, and that it may by hard toil climb up to the position it might have occupied at the hour of its entering on the new life. I think the capability of a soul to suffer at that time, must be beyond our comprehension. It is terrible on earth to realize our lost opportunities. It will be far more intense there. But even the most depraved will be given a chance to rise, through centuries of striving. There is no eternal damnation, any more than there is instantaneous salvation."

Percy rose to go, stirred to the very depths of his better nature by her words. As he made his adieus, he said:

"Miss Maxon, will you write to me? I am in great trouble, as I told you; a trouble that seems to shut out every particle of light from the universe. Your words afford me the only comfort I have had for weeks. Will you write to me and cheer me a little through the gloomy days that lie before me?"

Helena's heart welled full of sympathy toward all the suffering world. Her creed of life was, to give all the comfort, and help, and cheer, possible to every troubled mortal on life's highway. She was never afraid to reach out her hand to a weak fallen creature, for fear of soiling it.

It is the woman, who feels herself the strongest and most secure in her virtue and her social position, who is most fearless in her efforts to uplift the unfortunate: and a very benevolent heart, is seldom coupled with a cautious brain.

There was such real suffering in Percy's face and voice, that Helena's heart was moved with pity. She held out her hand and looked him full in the eyes, her own full of sweetest sympathy.

"Yes, I will write to you," she said. "I am very sorry for you, if you are in such trouble. But you must remember, that in this life, to grow means to suffer. I found actual happiness in pain, when I fully realized the truth of that."

"But you have never suffered, and made another suffer, by your own selfish folly," Percy said, as he turned away. "Good by, and God bless you for your promise to write to me."

CHAPTER XVIII.

APPLES OF SODOM.

E went away a thousand times more hopelessly entangled in the meshes of fate than ever.

He loved Helena with a passion that frightened him, so mysterious, so sudden, so exalted, so intense in its spiritual force was it.

He who said that love, to be sincere, must be of slow growth, that man was a fool.

As God said, unto the darkened world, "Let there be light" and there was light, so, unto many a slumbering heart, He has said, "Let there be love," and there was love—radiant, glorious, eternal, as is the splendor of the sun in the heavens.

So had love sprung to life in the heart of Percy Durand—a love that the waters of death could not quench.

"Never since my mother died," he whispered to his heart, "have I felt such an adoring affection bordering upon worship, as I feel for this girl. I could be any thing, do any thing, with her beside me—my guide, my friend, my mate, my wife."

Wife! Yes, that was how he thought of Helena. All his old theories and cynical beliefs fell away from him, like dead leaves from a tree, in the presence of this beautiful new love.

All his old life of license, and bachelor freedom, and secret companionship with a charming woman, seemed like the apples of Sodom to him now.

He wanted a home where he could proudly welcome the whole world, if need be, to witness his happiness. He wanted a wife to entertain his friends—not a mistress to hide from them; and he wanted children to crown his life and perpetuate his name.

These highest human instincts come knocking at the door of every man's heart, some time in his life.

He may bolt the door with avarice or pride, curtain the windows with lawless passions, and block the entrance with worldly ambitions and pleasure. But the Creator who meant him to be a part of that holy earthly trinity,—father, mother, and child,—shall send a great unrest upon his soul; and despite all his precautions, a longing for the love of a pure woman and a little child shall take possession of his heart.

That time had come to Percy: come as suddenly and unexpectedly as the greatest eras almost always come in human existence.

He closed his eyes and indulged in wild dreams.

He saw himself sitting before an open fire-place: a little distance from him, Helena, in flowing white robes, singing a golden-haired child to sleep upon her breast. Near by, a friend, some of his bachelor companions, perhaps, envying his happiness, as he looked upon the scene with admiring eyes.

Then he sprang up and fairly groaned aloud.

"I must guard myself in my letters," he said. "I will only write to Helena, as a suffering man might address a Sister of Charity. She shall never know how I love her, until my life is free from every fetter of sin and folly, and until I have made myself worthy by years of noble living."

But you may as well talk of hiding the glory of the sunrise from the earth, as the fervor of a great passion from the object which inspired it.

Careful as were his expressions, his letters breathed an atmosphere of love as passionate as his mysterious sorrow seemed hopeless.

Helena's nature was deeply romantic and profoundly sympathetic. These letters, therefore, appealed to the strongest elements of her being.

All through her girlhood she had jealously guarded her heart's vast store of intense love for an ideal lover whom she had never yet seen.

And now through the medium of an earnest sympathy she was bestowing upon Percy all the lavish wealth of her rich nature, just as one might give a five-dollar gold piece, thinking it was only a shining penny, to a mendicant. She lived in a dream world; she performed her duties as music teacher and choir singer mechanically. The people with whom she associated were shadowy and unreal forms. The only person who really existed for her, was Percy, with his load of mysterious sorrow, which she and her glorious horde of spirit friends would somehow lift from him.

With her slight knowledge of the world at large, and society as it exists in cities, Helena had no comprehension of what that sorrow might be. She did not puzzle her head to divine it. She was willing to wait Percy's own time. Whatever it was, she knew he deserved her sympathy and her prayers.

Almost daily Percy saw Dolores. Each day he promised himself, that he would tell her what was in his heart. Each day he delayed the dreaded scene.

Upon Dolores, the terrible and overwhelming conviction was forcing itself, that Percy no longer loved her. The thought of a rival never once presented itself to her. She knew that she was beautiful, accomplished, congenial—every thing, in fact, which he could desire in a companion.

"But," she reasoned, "it is a man's nature to tire of that which is his. Somewhere I have read, 'who ever gives too much in love, is certain not to receive enough in return;' and I am proving it true. It would be the same, were I his wife."

Then, in spite of herself, back upon her mind rushed the recollection of a quotation once made by Mrs. Butler in her arguments in favor of marriage: "If the fickle husband goes, he returns; but the lover, once gone, he never returns." She remembered how scornfully she had regarded such an argument. "What woman of pride or self-respect would desire the fickle husband to return?" she had said. "I should want him to go speedily, the moment his heart strayed from me, or tired of me. And better by far, for both, if there were no legal ties to sever."

All this sophistry she recalled now, with a dull pain at her heart. The time had come, when she felt positive, that Percy no longer loved her. Yet she could not tell him to go. The very thought of a separation was like a knife in her breast.

"How vain it is to assert what we would do in any situation in life," she said, "until we have loved. Love changes everything, even to one's whole nature. May God help me to bear this."

She had an instinctive knowledge, that Percy was trying to summon courage to tell her of his changed feelings. She shrank from it, as from a blow.

"I cannot hear him say the words," she moaned. "I cannot live and hear them from his lips; and I cannot let him go—I cannot, I cannot."

She grew thin and hollow-eyed, and the pathos of her face was heartrending. She tried to be cheerful and amuse Percy with her old flow of wit and anecdote. They took their usual drives, and indulged in theatres, and petits soupers afterward, as of old, but it was all a melancholy failure, a farce of their former happy days. Though he gave her the same gallant attentions, she knew his heart was not in it.

It was like looking on the dead face of a dear one: the features unchanged, but the spirit fled.

One day as he sat smoking a cigar in their pretty artistic rooms, while Dolores played a melancholy air on the piano, he determined to tell her of his resolution to leave her and go abroad. "I will not tell her that I love another," he thought; "that will give needless pain. But I cannot keep up this farce any longer. It must end."

"Dolores," he said, throwing away his cigar, "come and sit beside me on this ottoman. I want to talk with you."

She turned a pale, startled face to his, and her hands fell upon discordant keys.

"I will," she said, rising hurriedly, "in a moment. But first let me show you such a strange, sad little poem I found among some of Mrs. Butler's clippings to-day. Once I could not have understood such a sentiment. To-day I do. I remember showing you a poem that I thought applicable to ourselves another time, Percy. This is very unlike it."

She placed the slip of paper in his hand, and sat down beside him while he read it: her elbows resting on his knees, her brow bent on her clasped hands.

This was what he read:

When he had finished the reading, he turned and drew Dolores' white, suffering face against his breast without a word.

She lay there weeping silently, and neither spoke. But both hearts were full of unutterable pain and despair.

She clung to him as he rose to go.

"You will come to-morrow?" she said.

"Not to-morrow," he answered, gently. "I am going out of town for the day. But I will come again soon."

At the door he turned and looked back, his eyes full of infinite pity. Oh! how gladly he would have bestowed upon her the love that had so strangely gone out to Helena, had it been in his power.

"If God, among his gifts to mortals, had given us the ability to transfer an unwise love, how much misery we should be saved," he thought, as he went out.

CHAPTER XIX.

A STORY AND A REVELATION.

ERCY found himself so ill the next morning, that he was obliged to send for his physician, Dr. Sydney.

Ever since his return from South America, he had been losing strength and flesh, and a dull ache in his side, and darting pains throughout his entire body had rendered his nights restless, and his days full of lassitude. His physician had answered him that it was a "touch of malaria, contracted in the beastly climate of South America," and Percy had relied on quinine and time to effect a cure.

(We all know how customary it is in these days for physicians to designate any puzzling ailment by the convenient and indefinable term of malaria.)

But this morning, when Dr. Sydney was called to his patient, he decided that something more serious, and tangible than a touch of malaria was imminent.

Percy had been suffering from a hard chill during the night, which was now succeeded by a high fever, and acute pain in his side. He was sitting in his chair by the window—dressed as if to go out.

"My dear fellow, this will never do!" Dr. Sydney cried. "You are on the eve of a serious sickness, I fear, and you must be put to bed, and place yourself under treatment."

"Pshaw—nothing of the kind!" Percy answered. "I have taken cold, and beside, I am worn out with worry over some matters. That is all."

"H'm! then why did you send for me, if you know so much better about it than I do!" growled the old physician.

"Simply, because I want you to brace me up, and get me in condition to take a short trip on business this afternoon."

"A trip, business!" echoed Dr. Sydney, gazing at Percy over his spectacles. "Why, if you are not insane you will at once give up that idea. You will not be fit to leave your room under a week, if you do in that time: and you must have a good nurse, and keep perfectly quiet until you are out of this."

"But I tell you, I must attend to some important business out of town to-day!" Percy answered, stubbornly. "It is the worry and anxiety over the matter which has caused my illness, mainly. And I want you to give me a tonic, or a stimulant, or something that will carry me through the day. Then, if to-morrow I find myself no better, I will promise to go to bed and follow your advice. For I want to get in condition to go abroad very soon."

Finding his patient incorrigible, Dr. Sydney grimly prepared some medicine for him to take during the forenoon, and left him with a last injunction to be very careful of himself if he desired to escape a long siege of illness.

"But he can't escape it. It is coming, unless I greatly mistake symptoms!" he muttered, as he went out.

Percy remained in his room until the afternoon, then he set forth upon a visit to Centerville; and in the excitement of the hour, and under the stimulating effect of Dr. Sydney's tonic, he felt himself wonderfully improved as he walked up the village street.

He went directly to Helena. He had resolved to tell her the whole story, and abide by her decision of what was right for him to do.

"She has no actual knowledge of the world," he said to himself; "but she is endowed with divine wisdom, broad sympathies, and a natural understanding of the human heart. She is my best adviser."

She held out her hand to him, when she came into the room, saying: "This is an unexpected pleasure, Mr. Durand."

But he did not take the proffered hand. He only answered: "Wait. I came here to make a confession to you, and to ask your advice. Perhaps, after you have heard my story, you will not want to clasp my hand."

She looked up at him, startled, wondering.

"Surely you have not committed murder!" she said. "You do not resemble an assassin, Mr. Durand."

"There are different degrees of murder," he replied, "and I think to murder a human heart is the cruelest of all."

"Have you done that willfully?" she asked, lifting her sombre eyes to his face. "Then, indeed, I will not offer you my hand in greeting."

"No, no!" he added hastily, "not willfully, but thoughtlessly! and thoughtlessness is the consort of selfishness, and the two are parents of crime. But now listen to my story, Miss Maxon. I will be brief."

"My father died when I was but a child, and left me the only heir to an independent fortune. I grew into early manhood with this knowledge—a sad knowledge for any youth, because it leaves him with the consciousness that he need not exert his own powers of brain or muscle to make a name and place in Society. My mother died when I was fifteen—just at the time I most needed her gentle counsels, and refining influence. I was selfish, proud, passionate, strong-willed. But I tried to make a man of myself for the sake of my mother's memory. I believed all women were saints, because she was one. At twenty I met a beautiful woman, two or three years my senior. She possessed a magnificent form, and a face of wonderful brunette beauty. Every man in my circle was raving over her, and I became madly infatuated. I asked her to be my wife and she consented. I reveled in dreams of a home—something I had not known since my mother died. A few days before the time set for our wedding, I discovered that the woman I worshiped was making sport of me, and that she had promised to be my wife only to secure my fortune. More shocking still, she was carrying on the most flagrant infidelities, which were the talk of the club-rooms, while I, poor dupe, only discovered the horrible truth at the last hour. I was but a youth, and this experience nearly wrecked my life.

"I lost faith in every thing, human and divine, for a time. As years passed my wound healed, but all my views of life were changed. I looked upon women as vain, frivolous and deceitful, and whatever amusement they could afford me, I considered myself justified in taking. Marriage seemed to me a bondage, and love a dream sure to end in misery: a dream which could never disturb my heart again.

"After years of travel, adventure and folly, when a wearisome ennui toward the whole world had taken possession of me, I met a lovely woman.

"She also abhorred marriage, and had sworn eternal warfare against it. She was more pronounced and bitter in her denunciations of the social system than I. She was a charming companion; but I felt that the association was dangerous, and tried to fly from it. A perverse fate, however, constantly threw us together. Finally, she was left entirely alone in the world. In an evil hour, when she was weeping because her life was so desolate, I asked her to decide between the society she despised, and my companionship and protection."

He paused. It was hard to go on with those truthful, earnest, pure eyes gazing at him. How could he make her understand?

"Well—and what was her answer?" Helena asked, almost in a whisper.

"She has been living in pleasant apartments in New York, as my friend and comrade, for almost two years. Do you understand?"

"I understand," she answered, and a sudden chill shook her from head to foot.

"We were very happy for a year—for longer," he went on, hurriedly. "She was perfectly happy, because she believed she was doing right. I was not as happy as I had expected to be. My conscience seemed often to cry out, after years of silence; but I would not listen to it. We passed many delightful hours together, and I was always proud to think my friend was a beautiful, refined and true woman. I congratulated myself, that at least, I had shown better taste in the selection of my companion, than many of my friends who were similarly situated. The lady was independently wealthy, and our association was prompted by congenial tastes and affection.

"Then I met you. Your voice woke all the higher impulses of my nature: your conversation lifted me into a strangely rarified atmosphere; I abhorred my old life from the hour I met you. I have tried to break away from it, but I cannot without crushing a human heart. Unfortunately, my friend has passed through no such change of feeling. She is happy, and she loves me. To leave her alone, to desert her, seems heartless and cruel. The way of escape is hedged about with unforeseen difficulties. I am tortured from within and without. Surely the way of the transgressor is hard. I would reform my life, if I knew how. Can you tell me what is right to do under the circumstances?"

She was very pale. Her hands were clasped tightly before her. Her breath came hard. "There is one way—only one," she said. "I wonder it has not suggested itself to you. Make the tie that binds you to your friend a legal one. Make her your wife, and let the future atone for the past."

He started to his feet as if she had struck him.

"It is impossible!" he said. "She would never consent. It is opposed to all her theories."

Helena looked at him coldly, a dumb pain in her face.

"I fear you can not understand our very peculiar situation," he went on. "But you must believe I am telling you the whole truth. I am not misstating one thing. There has been no effort at misleading this woman—this friend of mine. There never was any talk of marriage between us, save to condemn it. She often said she liked me first, because I did not endeavor to convert her from her pet theories, as many men had done. She is very beautiful, and has been annoyed by many suitors. But she is almost a monomaniac upon the subject. You would find less to condemn in my course, if you could understand how peculiar and deep-rooted were her prejudices."

"I do understand," Helena answered. "I once knew just such a person as you describe. We were school-mates, and she shocked us all on graduating day, by an anti-marriage address. So I can understand the type of woman you describe. Yet these views of hers did not necessitate the grave course of action you suggested to her later on, surely."

Percy flushed. "No," he said, "that was the result of our dangerous companionship, and my selfishness. I could not continue in the platonic association so satisfactory to her, and I could not give her up easily, and so the great mistake was made. The error of a lifetime is often committed in a moment, you know. And now—"

"And now," Helena continued, calmly, with white lips as he paused, "now the right course of action for you seems very clearly defined. You can at least tell her of your changed ideas, and offer her marriage. If she declines, you are justified in leaving her. She has no right to compel you to live an unprincipled life. But she will not decline your offer. Even Heloise yielded her opinions and liberal theories to the request of Abelard, and became his wife, you know."

Percy had been walking the room excitedly while she spoke. As she ceased, he turned, and stood facing her with his arms folded.

"There is one more thing to tell you," he said. "Something which renders the advice you give impossible for me to follow. I love another woman with all the fervor of my soul, with all the strength of my heart. Love her with a love that lifts me up to the very gates of heaven, and purifies my whole nature like a refining fire. I see her face, waking or sleeping. I hear her voice in the silence of the night, and above the roar of the street, by day. It is a love which only comes to one man in a thousand, because only one woman in a million can inspire it. This love is at once an agony and a rapture. It asks, it expects no return. It fills my life full here, and it will pervade eternity for me when I die. But, loving like this, even though hopelessly, it would be sacrilege to ask any other woman to be my wife. Even to right a wrong, one should not commit a greater wrong—that of sinning against the holiest and most sacred emotion which ever entered a human heart."

While he spoke, Helena had grown crimson from brow to chin. Then she turned deathly pale, and, burying her face in her hands, she sank into a chair, sobbing wildly.

When he had told her the story of his life, she had wondered at the terrible pain it gave her to listen. But she had believed it was the disappointment she felt in finding her ideal friend so earthly. This together with her sympathy for the unknown woman.

Now, as she listened to his strangely impassioned words, there came to her a revelation that she had given him all the pent-up passion of her soul, all the pure love of her woman's heart. And to what end? The knowledge startled, shocked and terrified her, and she sobbed like a frightened child.

Percy was unmanned at the sight of her tears, yet this unexpected outburst filled him with sudden hope. After all, this divine being, this goddess did love him. He forgot everything, save that one fact.

"Helena!" he cried, kneeling before her, and striving to uncover her face—"my darling, my queen—look at me—speak to me."

She pushed him from her, and rose hurriedly.

"Oh!" she sobbed, "you are cruel. Do you want to break two hearts!" Then, as if alarmed at her own words, she added quickly, "You must go away now and leave me. I am all unnerved—I can not give you any more advice to-day. Please go." But as he turned to obey her, she called him back.

"One word only I would say to you now. Do not tell—your friend, what you have told me. Do not tell her that you love another woman. It will be hard enough for her to know that you are to go out of her life, without having that bitter knowledge added."

"God bless you!" he cried, his eyes full of tears. "You are the most generous woman I ever dreamed of in my wildest visions of what was noble."

Even in the supreme hour of her own new found misery—a misery so vast it seemed to fill the whole earth—Helena thought of her rival and tried to save her pain. Truly had Percy said she was one woman in a million.

CHAPTER XX.

THE HARVEST OF TARES.

ERCY returned to the Hotel, and before taking the train for New York, he wrote Helena a letter. Its contents were as follows:

The poem he enclosed we give below.

The following day, when Percy ushered himself into Dolores' apartments by his latch-key, he was surprised to find those bijou rooms in a state of disorder. Boxes, trunks, and packing cases were scattered about, while Dolores, attired in a loose white gown, was busily at work arranging garments and bric-a-bric.

"What in the world are you doing?" he asked, in amazement. "Are you going away?"

She lifted her wan, white face to his, with a look so pathetic, so full of widowed sorrow, that his heart smote him. O, Sin! how bitter are thy fruits.

"Yes, I am going away," she said. "Come and sit down here, and let me tell you all about it." And she led him to his favorite chair and sank upon the ottoman at his feet. "Ever since you went away the last time, I have been thinking, thinking, thinking," she said, pressing her hands to her head, "until I nearly grew wild. And the result of it all is, that I am going away: going to California. I think it is better that we should be parted, at least for a time."

She looked eagerly in his face; somehow she had fancied that when he found she was really determined to go away from him, that his old love for her, and his longing for her companionship would overmaster every other consideration.

She had reasoned it all out, through the sleepless night.

"He will be surprised, startled and hurt," she thought. "He does not believe I have strength to leave him. But I will go—and he shall follow me and sue hard, before I return to him. Not until I am gone will he fully realize what my love has been to him. If I were his wife, now, I could not go, and he would know I could not. When he stops and thinks what this step might mean—and all it might mean, I know he will regret having driven me to it. Even if he has tired of me himself, man-like, he will dread the possibility of my going to another lover—as many women in my situation would do. But go where I will I shall be true to him—oh, so true! for I must love him, and him only till I die. It is my fate."

So she had talked to herself while she made her plans. Now, when she had told him that she was going away, she looked up in his face, expecting to see surprise and chagrin. Instead, she saw only relief, intense relief.

"Yes, Dolores, it is better that we should part, even as you say," he answered. "There is a better and a truer life for each of us, than the life we are living, even if it is a lonelier one. We have made a great mistake, but we can rectify it in a measure, by parting now."

All hope died in her heart. Her face flushed, her breast heaved with violent emotion.

"You are late in finding this out!" she said, bitterly; "but I believe it is customary with men, to never discover mistakes of this kind, until the woman's life is wrecked. It is so very natural for a man to moralize standing on a crushed and ruined heart."

"Dolores, let us part without any bitter words, for heaven's sake!" he cried. "Our mistake, our sin, whatever we may choose to call it, has been mutual. I never lured you to destruction; I never deceived you; I never meant to wrong you. You understood the world, you were no ignorant girl: you were a woman, old enough to know the importance of the step I proposed."

"Had I been a young girl I should never have yielded," she answered. "It is the ripe fruit which falls when a south wind shakes the tree."

"Well, you must not forget that we agreed upon the course of action which has resulted in our misery. Neither should blame the other. Let us part friends, not enemies."

"Friends!" and all of wounded pride and scorned love, and hopeless passion was in her voice as she repeated the word.

Ah! when will a man ever learn that he cannot offer a more cruel insult to a woman he has once professed to love, than to call her his "friend."

Percy felt great drops of perspiration starting out on his brow. He drew his handkerchief from his pocket, and with it a letter fluttered and fell at Dolores' feet.

She picked it up, and she might have returned it without a glance at the superscription had not Percy sprung forward with a guilty flush, crying hurriedly,

"Excuse my awkwardness; give me the letter, please?"

Then she glanced down upon it. It was addressed in a delicate feminine penmanship, and the date of the post-mark was not a week old.

A sudden suspicion fired her blood; her pansy eyes blazed black as sloes as she turned them on Percy's tell-tale face.

"So!" she said, slowly and mockingly; "there is a cause for all this excess of morality, mon ami, is there?"

"Give me the letter, please?" was his only response.

She took a step back, and looked at him with defiant eyes.

"I demand to know the contents of this letter before I return it!" she said. "If it in no way relates to our proposed separation, you will not fear to show it to me. If it does, I have a right to know."

He looked at her coldly, and his words, as they fell, pierced her like poisoned arrows.

"You have no right to demand any thing of the kind," he said, quietly. "Our relations are simply with each other. We have always understood that, I believe. You are not that most despised object in your own eyes, Dolores—a wife. Therefore you have no right to question me concerning my correspondence. The letter, please."

She threw it at his feet. "Take it!" she cried, "but remember, Percy Durand, as God hears me, no other woman shall be your wife while I live."

He turned toward the door without a word. But as he went, he took her latch-key from his pocket and dropped it carelessly on the open leaf of her ebony desk.

That one act, said more effectually than the bitterest words could have said, that all was at an end between them. He was no longer her comrade, her friend, her lover, who came and went at will; he was a stranger, who, if he ever came again, would come in the capacity of a guest.

She flung out her arms with a wild cry:

"Percy, Percy, come back! Do not leave me like this—I cannot bear it."

He turned back, moved by the passionate pain of her voice.

As he turned, his eye fell upon an old photograph, lying among a parcel of letters, in the open tray of a partially packed trunk.

"Who is this, Dolores?" he asked, picking up the card, and standing as if transfixed.

Dolores went forward and looked over his shoulder. She thought he was relenting toward her, and if a reconciliation seemed possible, she desired it at any cost.

Ah! pitying heaven! how at the mercy of the weakest man, the strongest woman is, if she loves him.

"That?" she said, laying her hand gently on his arm, "that is an old picture of a school-mate of mine,—oh, how long ago it seems! She was the only intimate friend I ever had until I met Mrs. Butler. And yet I have utterly lost all trace of her. Our correspondence died a natural death, before I had been two years abroad."

"What was her name?" asked Percy, and his heart almost stood still to listen to her reply.

"Her name was Lena—Helena Maxon. She lived in a pretty place called Elm Hill. I suppose she is married and the mother of a family ere this. She was just the kind of girl to marry young, and she was abnormally fond of babies, I remember. She actually brought her doll to school with her, when she was seventeen years old."

Dolores talked on volubly, glad to forget the torturing scene of a few moments before. She fancied that he felt the same, and that he was asking these questions simply to bridge over their quarrel.

Percy thought the room was whirling around him. He sat down in a neighboring chair.

"I wonder you never spoke of her to me before!" he said. "She has an interesting face. I did not know you had such a friend in America. Why have you never looked her up?"

She gazed at him in questioning surprise, his voice, his manner were so strange.

"I think I mentioned her to you when I told you the story of my Uncle's death," she answered, pleasantly, eager to win him to good humor again. "While abroad, our lives drifted so far apart, I seldom recalled the old intimacy. Since my return—I have hardly felt situated to seek a renewal of our acquaintance. It might have been embarrassing for both of us, Percy, and you know I have not felt the need of any friend or companion but you."

He laid down the picture and covered his eyes as if to shut out the sight of it.

"My God!" he cried, suddenly, "it cannot be true—it is too terrible."

Dolores' jealous suspicions concerning the letter took definite shape and form.

"Why are you talking so strangely?" she asked, facing him suddenly. "Do you know Helena Maxon, Percy? Have you ever met her?"

"Yes," he answered, "I know her—I have met her. Oh, Dolores, I wish to God I were dead."

"I wish we both were!" she cried passionately. "I wish God had sent death to us there in that Andean valley, when something told me, that we were never to be so happy again." Then, growing excited, she clenched her slender hands and stood before him, speaking in a low suppressed voice. "You shall never marry her, never!" she cried. "I can hinder it. When we were in Santiago, you registered me as your wife, to avoid gossip. To Lorette, you have called me Madame Percy—your wife. These things, told in a court of justice, would prevent you from making another woman your wife. I will follow you to the ends of the earth to prevent it."

Percy put his hands to his head in a dazed way.

"Don't!" he protested wearily. "I am ill, suffering, Dolores. Let us end this miserable scene. I have no idea of making any woman my wife. It would be an insult to any good woman to ask her to take the remnant of my miserable existence.

"I am going abroad at once—to-morrow; and I hope you will continue your preparations for your journey. And now, good by—I am too ill to endure another word to-day."

He loosened the hold she had taken on his arm in her excitement, and almost staggered out of the room and down the stairs.

CHAPTER XXI.

A STRANGE MARRIAGE.

HEN Percy returned to his apartments he found a letter from Helena awaiting him. It was written in reply to his, posted to her before leaving Centerville.

His head was aching, and his vision blurred strangely as he read the written words. It began without an address, abruptly.