"I want no friends, no home." (She is still clinging to his knees, with her white earnest face uplifted to his.) "Let me be your slave,--anything; but do not part from me. I cannot live without you now. It is only death you offer me."

"Remember my temper," he says, warningly. "Only last night I struck you. Think of that. I shall probably strike you again. Be advised in time, and forsake me, like all the others."

"You torture me," she says, still in the same low panting whisper.

"You are my very heart,--my life. Take me with you. Only let me see your face sometimes, and hear your voice. I will not trouble you, or hinder you in any way; only let me be near you." She presses her pale lips to his hand with desperate entreaty.

"Be it so," he says, after a moment's hesitation. "If ever, in the days to come, you repent your bargain, blame yourself, not me. I have offered you liberty, and you have rejected it. I shall leave this country in a week's time; so be prepared. But before going, as you are so determined to cast in your lot with mine, I shall marry you."

She starts to her feet.

"Marry me?" she says, faintly. "Make me your wife! Oh, no! you don't know what you are saying."

She trembles violently, and her head falls somewhat heavily against his arm.

"It isn't worth a fainting fit," he says, hastily enough; but his arm, as he places it round her, is strong and compa.s.sionate. "Can anything be more absurd than a woman? Sit down here, and try to be reasonable.

You must be quick with your preparations, as we start on Tuesday. I will see about a special license, and we can get the marriage ceremony over to-morrow. I know a fellow who will manage it all for me."

"You are quite sure you will never regret this step?" she says, earnestly, even at this supremely happy moment placing his happiness before her own.

"I don't suppose so. If it is any satisfaction to you to know it," he says, with a shrug, "you are the only woman I have ever loved, and probably the only one I ever shall love."

A smile--radiant, perfect--lights her face. Surely, just then, the one moment of utter happiness, that they tell us is all that is ever allowed to poor mortals, is hers. It is broken by the clock of a neighboring church clanging out the hour.

"So late!" says Horace, hurriedly. "I must go. Until to-morrow, Ruth, good-by."

"Good-by!" She places her hands upon his shoulders, and, throwing back her head, gazes long and earnestly into his face, as though reading once again each line in the features she loves with such devotion.

"Before you go," she says, solemnly, "call me what I shall be so soon.

Say, 'Good-by, my wife!'"

"Good-by, my wife!" returns he, with more love in his accents than she has heard for months.

She presses her lips pa.s.sionately to his, and again, for the last time, breathes the word "Farewell!"

His rapid footsteps descend the stairs. She listens to them until they have ceased and all is still. Then she goes to the window, and presses her forehead against the cold pane, that she may once more see him as he crosses the street. The lamps are all alight, and a lurid glare from one falls full upon her as she stands leaning eagerly forward to catch the last glimpse of him she loves.

Presently she sinks into a seat, always with her eyes fixed upon the spot where she last has seen him, and sits motionless, with her fingers twisted loosely in her lap; she is so quiet that only the red gleam from the world without betrays the fact of her presence.

Once her lips part, and from them slowly, ecstatically, come the words, "His wife." Evidently her whole mind is filled with this one thought alone. She thinks of him, and him only,--of him who has so cruelly wronged her, yet who, in his own way, has loved her, too.

The moments fly, and night comes on apace, clothed in her "golden dress, on which so many stars like gems are strewed;" yet still she sits before the window silently. She is languid, yet happy,--weak and spent by the excitement of the past hour, yet strangely full of peace.

Now and again she presses her hand with a gesture that is almost convulsive to her side; yet whatever pain she feels there is insufficient to drown the great gladness that is overfilling her.

To-morrow,--nay, even now, it is to-day,--and it is bringing her renewed hope, fresh life, restored honor! He will be hers forever! No other woman will have the right to claim him. Whatever she may have to undergo at his hands, at least he will be her own. And he has loved her as he never loved another. Oh, what unspeakable bliss lies in this certainty! In another land, too, all will be unknown. A new life may be begun in which the old may be swallowed up and forgotten. There must be hope in the good future.

"When we slip a little Out of the way of virtue, are we lost?

Is there no medicine called sweet mercy?"

Only this morning she had deemed herself miserable beyond her fellows; now, who can compete with her in utter content? In a few short hours she will be his wife! Oh that her father could but----

Her father! Now, all at once, it rushes back upon her; she is a little dazed, a good deal unsettled, but surely some one had said that her--her father--was--dead!

The lamps in the street die out. The sickly winter dawn comes over the great city. The hush and calm still linger; only now and then a dark phantom form issues from a silent gateway, and hurries along the pavement, as though fearful of the growing light.

Ruth has sunk upon her knees, and is doing fierce battle with the remorse that has come to kill her new-born happiness. There is a terrible pain at her heart, even apart from the mental anguish that is tearing it. Her slight frame trembles beneath the double shock; a long shivering sob breaks from her; she throws her arms a little wildly across the couch before which she is kneeling, and gradually her form sinks upon her arms. No other sob comes to disturb the stillness. An awful silence follows. Slowly the cold gray morning fills the chamber, and the sun,--

"Eternal painter, now begins to rise, And limn the heavens in vermilion dyes."

But within deathly silence reigns. Has peace fallen upon that quiet form? Has gentle sleep come to her at last?

Horace, ascending the stairs cautiously, before the household is astir, opens the room where last he had seen Ruth, and comes gently in. He would have pa.s.sed on to the inner chamber, thinking to rouse her to prepare in haste for their early wedding, when the half-kneeling half-crouching figure before the lounge attracts his notice.

"Ruth," he says, very gently, fearful lest he shall frighten her by too sudden a summons back to wakefulness; but there is no reply. How can she have fallen asleep in such an uncomfortable position? "Ruth,"

he calls again, rather louder, some vague fear sending the blood back to his heart; but again only silence greets his voice. And again he says, "Ruth!" this time with pa.s.sionate terror in his tone; but, alas!

there is still no response. For the first time she is deaf to his entreaty.

Catching her in his arms, he raises her from her kneeling posture, and, carrying her to the window, stares wildly into her calm face,--the poor, sad, pretty face of her who had endured so much, and borne so long, and loved so faithfully.

She is dead!--quite dead! Already the limbs are stiffening, the hands are icy cold, the lips, that in life would so gladly have returned kiss for kiss, are now silent and motionless beneath the despairing caresses he lavishes upon them in the vain hope of finding yet some warmth remaining.

But there is none. She is gone, past recall, past hearing all expressions of remorseful tenderness. In the terrible lonely dawn she had pa.s.sed away, with no one near to hold her dying hand, without a sigh or moan, leaving no farewell word of love or forgiveness to the man who is now straining her lifeless body to his heart, as though to make one last final effort to bring her back to earth.

There is a happy smile upon her lips, her eyes are quite closed, almost she seems as one that sleepeth. The awful majesty of death is upon her, and no voice of earth, however anguished and imploring, can reach her ice-bound heart. As the first faint touch of light that came to usher in her wedding morn broke upon the earth, she had died, and gone somewhere

"Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot Which men call earth."

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

"Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on the night?"--MILTON.

The two months that Dorian has given himself in which to finish the business that, he said, had brought him home, have almost come to an end. Already winter is pa.s.sing out of mind, and "Spring comes up this way."

The "checkered daffodil" and the soft plaintive primrose are bursting into bloom. The gentle rain comes with a pa.s.sing cloud, and sinks lovingly into the earth's bosom and into the hearts of the opening buds.

The gra.s.s is springing; all the world is rich with fresh young life.

The very snowdrops--pale blossoms, born of bitter winds and sunless skies--have perished out of sight.

Ruth is lying in her grave, cold and forgotten save by two,--the man who has most wronged her, and the woman who had most to forgive her.

As yet, Clarissa cannot rise out of the depression that fell upon her when Horace's treachery was first made known to her. Her love had seemed so good, so tender, it had so brightened all her life, and had been so much a part of her existence, that it seemed to carry to the grave with it all her youth and gladness. However untrue this young love of her life had been, still, while she believed in it, it had been beautiful to her, and it is with bitterest grief she has laid it aside; to her it had been a living thing, and even as it fades from her she cries to it aloud to stay, and feels her arms empty in that it no longer fills them.

"But, oh, not yet, not yet Would my lost soul forget How beautiful he was while he did live, Or, when his eyes were dewy and lips wet, What kisses, tenderer than all regret, My love would give.

"Strew roses on his breast,-- He loved the roses best; He never cared for lilies or for snow.

Let be this bitter end of his sweet quest; Let be the pallid silence, that is rest, And let all go!"