and softness through my body,—a delicious sense of comfort. I lay there, with eyes closed, enjoying this as long as it lasted. But that was not very long. Little by little, as I got wider awake, it passed away, and left me with a feeling of strangeness,—a feeling that something strange had happened, or that I was in a strange place, or that somehow things had been changed. Then I opened my eyes; and then at once I saw that my feeling had been right. I saw that I was in a strange place. The sun was shining through the window; and my clothes were on a chair in the midst of the sunlight. What could this mean? Where could I be? For a minute or two I was perplexed and frightened; but only for a minute or two. Suddenly everything came back. Memory sprang like a wild beast upon me. I buried my face in the pillow, and bit the pillow-case, and moaned aloud.
Yes, in a single, vivid flash, everything came back,—everything from the time I had started to tell my secret to Eugene, down to the time of my going to bed last night,—all that he had said to me, and how he had gone away and left me, and how my heart had burned. Is it needful that I should tell you how I lay there, and thought, and suffered? Can't you put yourself in my place, and guess? It was all over and done with; my life as Eugene's wife was all over and done with. That was the thought that clung like a thorn in my mind, that would not be plucked out, that made every breath I drew a pain. It was all over and done with,—all. He had said that I was a burden to him. He did not love me. Well, I should not be a burden to him any more. I would try to get along without his love. It may not sound like much when I tell it to you now; but to lie there then, and think it, and understand it,—oh, it made me want to scream out and tear my hair. It was as if all that I cared for on the earth had turned to ashes. There was nothing to look forward to,—nothing but weariness and misery. I wished that I was dead; yes, though I knew that I had no right to die, that I must not die, still I wished with all my heart that I was dead. That was the worst,—to hate life so, to long so for death, and yet to know that I had no right to die, and must go on living! Life,—it stretched before me like a dark wilderness, peopled by terrors, into which and through which I should have to make my way alone. I lay there in the bed Merotti had given me, lay there and thought,—thought about the past and about the future,—until the sun had risen so high that only a narrow strip of sunlight was left in the room. Out in the street there was a great deal of noise,—voices of people passing, horse-car bells, rattle of wagons on the pavement, thunder of trains on the elevated railway, and in the distance the melancholy strain of a hand-organ. These noises sounded strangely in my
