As Theophil read this, all that sad night came back to him with unbearable vividness, and he felt once more a little sobbing body crying its heart out against his.  At that moment he would have endured centuries of torment just to have undone what could never be undone; and an awful thought that he had not dared allow into the daylight of his mind, suddenly sprang hideous in full view of his stricken soul:  the thought that, however he might soothe its intolerable pain, he it was who had—­killed Jenny.  “She seems to have had a shock,” a voice was saying over and over again, “she seems to have had a shock.”

A shock!  Yes! and Isabel, whom all this time, he had kept thrust in the outer darkness of thought, forbidding his soul to breathe her name, now sprang into vivid light again in company with that thought.  In that moment he felt to hate her, and it was with a cruel mental oath he hurled her back again into the dark.  It was she, she who had made him—­kill Jenny!

But this was a thought that either must kill him, or be made endurable by some advocate of the stricken conscience; and it was with no wish to deceive himself, or to escape from his sin, that Theophil told himself that this murder of a soul, to which he pleaded guilty, was indeed no wilful act, but the accident of two tragically conditioned souls, who had planned, at their own agony, a fate of happiest life for Jenny.

Yet, the accuser urged, are not theories of life which thus jeopardise the happiness of human souls theories which it is criminal to hold?  Shall you try your new ways to heaven at the risk of broken hearts?

But a voice said—­was it Jenny’s?—­this poor Theophil and Isabel love by reason of no theory.  It is yours, O ruling Fates of men, whatever you be, who must support that accusation.  Theophil and Isabel loved by the compelling dispensation of the stars.  They fought their destiny, and had conquered it.  It was you, ye stars, not they, that killed Jenny.

And this was true:  but still the little figure sobbed at Theophil’s side, as again and again it would come and sob there, till Theophil’s own heart broke,—­that old death-crying of Jenny’s broken heart.

CHAPTER XXV

JENNY’S POSTE RESTANTE

After Jenny’s death two letters had come for her from Isabel, who had no knowledge of what had been happening to her friends of New Zion.

There is something peculiarly sad about the letters that for a little time go on coming for the dead.  Perhaps nothing more simply brings home the fact that they are no longer with us.  Even little bills, circulars offering new spring goods at sale prices, come charged with pathos, and Theophil smiled at his own folly as he kept them all.  Sad little poste restante!  Will the letters ever be called for?

Theophil did not open the letters, but as days went by and no more came, he sometimes found himself taking them from their drawer and looking at them.  Isabel’s handwriting, though his soul would not confess it to himself, still held the power of a rune over his heart.