“In the immensity, where shall I find my place?  Oh, that I might sleep eternally!  Yes, that would be best of all—­to sink into sleep never ending, unbroken, and unbreakable, to be absorbed into the cool vastness of the night, and lie in her great arms for ever.  Oh, Night! whom I have ever loved, you bring your sleep to wearied millions—­ bring me sleep eternal.  But no, the stars are above the night, and above the stars is—­what?  Yes; the hour I dread like every other mortal with my body, and yet dare to long for with my spirit, has come.  I am about to cast off Time, and pass into Eternity, to spring from the giddy heights of Space into the uncertain arms of the Infinite.  Yet a few minutes, and my essence, my vital part, will start upon its endless course, and passing far above those stars, will find the fount of that knowledge of which it has already sipped, and drink and drink till it grows like a God, and can look upon the truth and not be blinded.  Such are my high hopes.  And yet—­if there be a hell!  My life has been evil, my sins many.  What if there be an avenging Power waiting, as some think, to grind me into powder, and then endow each crushed particle with individual sense of endless misery?  What if there be a hell!  In a few minutes, or what will seem but a few minutes —­for surely, to the disembodied spirit, time cannot exist; though it sleep a billion years, it will be as a breath—­I shall have solved the problem.  I shall know what all the panic-stricken millions madly ask, and ask in vain!  Yes, I shall know if there is a hell! Well, if there be, then I shall rule there, for power is native to my soul.  Let me hesitate no longer, but go and solve the problem before I grow afraid.  Afraid—­I am not afraid.  ‘I have immortal longings in me.’  Who was it said that?  Oh, Cleopatra!  Was Cleopatra more beautiful than I am, I wonder?  I am sure that she was not so great; for, had I been her, Antony should have driven Caesar out of Egypt.  Oh! if I could have loved with a pure and perfect love as other women may, and intertwined my destiny with that of some great man—­some being of a nature kindred to my own—­I should have been good and happy, and he should have ruled this country.  But Fate and Fortune, grown afraid of what I should do, linked my life to a soulless brute! and, alas! like him I have fallen—­fallen irretrievably!”

She closed the window, and, coming into the room, rang the bell.

“Bring me some wine,” she said to the servant.  “I do not feel well.”

“What wine, my lady?”

“Champagne.”

The wine was brought, and stood, uncorked, upon the table.

“That will do,” she said.  “Tell my maid not to sit up for me:  it will be late before I go to bed to-night.”

The man bowed and went, and she poured out some of the sparkling wine, and then, taking the little phial, opened it with difficulty, and emptied its contents into the glass.  The wine boiled up furiously, turned milk-white, and then cleared again; but the poison had destroyed its sparkle—­it was dead as ditch-water.