"That was sweet of you, Hannah," she said presently, a look of simple affectionateness chasing away the other. "It is good to think that there was any one, in all that great crowd of people, who cared so much about me, but, my good little friend, never trouble yourself with that thought in connection with me again. My heart is dead--so dead that it seem weary waiting for the rest of me to die, and nothing but the resurrection morning that renews it all can ever give me back the heart I had before I was married. It did not die suddenly at one blow, but it died a lingering death of slow, slow pain. Think what it is! I am younger than you, and already joy and pleasure and hope are words that have no meaning for me. Oh, poor Hannah! I oughtn't to make you cry, and yet your tears are blessed things. When I could cry I was not so wretched."

She leaned toward the girl and clasped her close, kissing the teardrops from each eye and soothing her, as if hers had been the sorrow.

"I want to be just to my husband," she went on presently. "I do believe he is not to blame. He gives me all he has to give, but there is nothing! Oh, when I look into my heart and see its power of suffering, and see, too, how marvellously happy I might once have been, I seem a thousand worlds away from him--my husband, who ought to be the very closest, nearest, likest thing to me! Perhaps he is not happy, but at least he does not suffer, and he is always contented to live on as we are--no work, no friends, no ambition, no interest in life, except mere living. Oh, but it is hard! How long will it go on so, Hannah?" she broke out suddenly, with a ring of fervor in her voice. "Did you ever hear of any one living on and on and on, in a life like this? Could it go on until one got old and deaf and wrinkled, and can anything end it but death? It seems so impossible that I can be the little Christine who used to sit and dream of happiness in marriage, and of the handsome lover who would come some day and carry me off to a beautiful land where all my dreams would be realized. I came out on that stage to-night," she went on, sitting upright and folding her beautiful arms, "and while the people were looking at me and clapping, a thought came to me that made me feel like sobbing. I wondered in my soul how many broken hearts were covered by those lace and velvet garments, and those smiling, superficial faces. The thought absorbed me so that I forgot everything and the prompter thought I'd forgotten my part entirely and gave me my cue."

"I saw you. I saw the strange look that came over your face, but I did not know what it meant. And perhaps the people envied you and thought you must be so happy, to be so beautiful and admired. Oh, poor Christine! I am sorry for you. I wish you could be happy. It seems as if you might."

"_You_ might! Everything is possible to you. There is no reason, I suppose, why you may not have all the happiness I ever dreamed of, for, after all, the beginning and end of it was love. And yet I have advised you never to marry--for I often disbelieve in the existence of the sort of love that I have dreamed of--but how can I tell? I know nothing but my own life, and I tell you that is an intolerable pain. I sit here and say the words and you hear them, but they are words only to you, shut off as you are from all the experiences that make up my suffering.

Lately there has been a new one. If anything could make my life more miserable it would be the addition of poverty and privation to what I bear already--and that is what I am threatened with--what may probably be just ahead of me. Suppose that should come too! Why, then I should be more unhappy yet, I suppose, although I have thought I couldn't be."

She spoke still with that strange calm which her companion had wondered at from the beginning of their conversation. Her manner in the carriage seemed to be a part of the excitement of the evening's performance, but now the cold calm of reaction had come on and she was very quiet. She had leaned back again in the big chair, and looked at Hannah gravely.

Neither of them thought of sleep, and their faces expressed its nearness as little as if it were afternoon, instead of midnight. The last words uttered by Christine had presented a practical difficulty to her friend which her own experiences brought home to her forcibly, while they shut her off from a just sympathy with some of her other trials.

"What do you mean?" she said. "Isn't your husband well off and able to support you comfortably?"

"How do I know? How am I to find out?"

"Ask him. Make him explain to you exactly what his circ.u.mstances are. I wonder you haven't done that long ago."

"You will wonder at a good deal more if you go on. For my part, I have wondered and wondered until I have no power to wonder left. I did ask him--that and many other things--and the result is I am as blind and ignorant this moment as you are." She spoke almost coldly. One would have thought it was another and an almost indifferent person whose affairs she was discussing.

"But how can you be ignorant?" said Hannah. "Does he refuse to answer your questions?"

"No--he doesn't refuse to answer them, though it is evident he thinks them useless and annoying--but generally he tells me he doesn't know."

"Doesn't know how much money he has, or whether he is rich or poor?"

The other nodded in acquiescence.

"Why, how on earth can that be so? Doesn't he always have money to pay for things as you go along?"

"Yes--heretofore he has always had. I have needed nothing for myself.

All the handsome clothes you see me wear belong to my poor, miserable trousseau." She smiled bitterly as she said it, but there were no tears in her eyes and her voice was utterly calm.

"What makes you think, then, that he may not continue to have plenty?"

"A letter I read without his permission, though he left it on the table and probably didn't care. I have been troubled vaguely for some time to find he knew nothing whatever about his business affairs, and that he merely drew on his lawyer for what he wanted, and was always content so long as he got it. Lately, however, although he had been looking for a remittance, the lawyer's letter came without it, and it was that letter that I read. I saw he looked annoyed, but not for long. He put the letter down and spent the evening playing solitaire, as he always does when he doesn't go to the theatre. After he went to bed I read the letter. It was from the lawyer in the far West, who had always had charge of the money left by his father--and he said that having repeatedly warned him that he could not go on spending his princ.i.p.al without coming to the end of his rope, he had to tell him now that the end was almost reached. He might manage to send him a remittance soon by selling some bonds at a great sacrifice, and as his orders were imperative of course he would have to do this, but he notified him that there was scarcely anything left, a certain tract of land, which was almost valueless, and that, he said, was the entire remnant of his inheritance, which could never have been very much as he certainly has no extravagant tastes."

"Why didn't you tell him you had read the letter and ask him about it?"

said Hannah, her rather acute little face animated and serious at once.

"I did."

"And what did he say?"

"That a woman had no business meddling with men's affairs, and that he could not help it."

"But if it is so why doesn't he get something to do?"

"I asked him and he said he couldn't."

"But had he tried?"

"He said he had--several times."

"What could he do?"

Christine shook her head.

"I have wondered," she said, "and I can think of nothing. He said he was not trained to any business, and I know no more what to tell him to do than he knows himself. The lawyer advised him to go to work, but did not suggest how. He spoke as if he did not know of his marriage, for he said a man ought to be able to get something to do that would support one."

"Oh, Christine! and is this all you accomplished?"

"This is all."

"How long ago was it?"

"About a week."

"And you have gone through with all that rehearsing and dressing and acting with this weight on your mind? How could you do it?"

"I was determined to do it. It kept me from thinking. I could not withdraw at the last moment. I knew that as soon as the performance was over I would have to look the thing in the face somehow, though I am more helpless than any child. The thought has pursued me through everything. It terrifies me less when I sit and face it calmly, so, than when I put it by and it comes rushing back--as it did to-night while I was singing my last solo. I thought it would take my breath away, but instead it seemed to give an impulse to my voice that made me sing as I had never sung before. I wondered to hear myself, and I was not surprised the people applauded. It was a love song, but what did I care for the stupid man who stood and rolled his eyes at me sentimentally while I sang it? I was in a frenzy, not of love, but despair. This last knowledge that has come to me has put the final touch. To be an actual beggar, as I may be before long, leaves nothing more but death--and that would be peace and satisfaction and joy."

"But surely your father will help you when he understands."

"He has no money generally. I know he had to borrow some to get my wedding clothes. He explained to me that the last cent of my little inheritance from my mother had been spent on my education. Besides," she added, with a change of tone that made her face harden, "I shall not tell him. I feel bitterly toward my father. He could never have truly loved me: he wanted to rid himself, as soon as he could, of the burden of me. So I am left absolutely without a friend. I don't forget you, Hannah," she added quickly. "You are my friend, I know, and would help me if you could. Your love can help me and it does and will, but we are poor little waifs together--only you can do something to support yourself, and your mother loves you, while I am utterly helpless and have no love in all the world except what you give me. Oh, Hannah, you must never leave me!"

"Where is Mr. Noel--the gentleman you told me of who was so good to you on the steamer, and afterward came to see you and spoke to you so kindly?"

"He has forgotten me--at least I suppose so," she said, shaking her head. "Yes, he was good to me. I think he would be sorry for me. He has gone back to Europe and taken his mother and sisters. Some one was speaking of them and said they all loved him so. You and I are more desolate than most people, Hannah. You have only your mother and me to love you--and I have only you."

VI.

The clock on the mantel struck twelve. Christine rose to her feet with a little shiver. There was a mirror not far away, toward which she turned and surveyed herself from head to foot. As she did so the soft folds of her Greek drapery settled about her, severe and beautiful. The ma.s.ses of her dark hair were drawn into a loose, rich knot pierced by a gold dagger, and her eyes--so remarkably beautiful in color and expression that no one ever saw them unimpressed--were clear and steady as they gazed at the reflected image in front of her.

"I wonder," she said, lifting her bare arms with a sort of conscious unconsciousness and clasping her hands in a fine pose behind her head, which she turned slightly to one side, "I wonder if this is the very last of me--the very last of the Christine who loved to look beautiful and wear rich clothes and be admired, and who thought that she would one day be loved."

Turning away from that long look she held out both fair arms to Hannah.

"Come close, close, Hannah," she said, as the plain little teacher, in her rough dark gown, was drawn into her embrace. "I want to feel some living thing near my heart to-night, for I am frightened and lonely. I have told myself good-by. Christine is dead and gone and I have buried her. I want some one near me in these first moments of my strange new self. Oh, Hannah, if we could die! Not you--for your mother needs you--but me. Oh, Hannah," she said, in a strained voice that sounded as if it were only by an effort that she kept her teeth from chattering, "if I hadn't you to-night I don't know what would become of me."

Hannah tried to soothe her with soft words of comfort and a.s.surances of love.

"It will not be so dark and sad and friendless as you think," she said.