"That is better. You may then presently become his wife."
Her mouth was slightly twitching. She has that most unpleasant habit of melting with compassion over her own woes.
"Only, please, Martha, not death! Don't let us hear about death!"
"I am in a very bad way."
"The idea! You always have been so terribly afraid to die; you told me so. Do you remember?"
"Oh, but it's quite another thing now!—Afraid of death, I?—No, I desire it with all the desire of my wretched heart. Yes, I desire it that you may become his wife, that you may yourself fathom the depths of the tortures I have gone through, and bask (as I am doing) in the beams of the bliss they give; that you, like me, may taste the delight of them by cupfuls brimming over!—Yet more, yet more!—May you quaff your fill of wormwood, till you overflow with it!—be suffocated with the mortal scent of those flowers of his—drink in their odoriferous delight and the poisonous steam of them, even to agony, even to death!—May I be avenged, when you are forced to yield him up to another! And may the knowl-
