I rose—­weak and tottering—­and passed to the door.  I caught but a glimpse of her face.  There was in it, and particularly in her eyes,—­which, perhaps, on account of her dramatic cultivation, had the faculty of concentrating in a wonderful manner the most powerful as well as the most indefinable expressions,—­a peculiar light, which then I did not understand, but afterwards, oh, too well.  Fool, fool, that I was, after all my anxious scrutiny of her moods through two years of intensest agony, not to understand this one.  The alchemist, who wasted his life in vigils over his crucible, but stood uncognizant of the gold when it gleamed lustrously before him, was not more a dolt.  Thrice afterward I beheld that light in her glorious eyes.  To my spiritual sight I can ever recall it.  When you asked me her history, those orbs of beauty beamed out upon me with that same fascinating light.

* * * * *

I went immediately to America.  My ruin was entire.  I had greatly embarrassed my fortune in wild extravagances for Evelyn, and the remainder I surrendered to my partners.  Their criminations were somewhat assuaged, and our partnership relations being dissolved, the business was reorganized, and I was engaged in a humble clerical capacity.  Moody and taciturn, I was regarded simply as the ordinary victim of a recklessly spendthrift wife, and was ridiculed and pitied as such.  What cared I for ridicule or pity?

A letter came from Evelyn, stating that she designed resuming her profession, and would appear immediately in London.  Sometime in the Spring I should hear from her again.

Accompanying the letter was a formal legal surrender of such property as she possessed by my gift or otherwise, and a demand that I should apply it to cancel my obligations.  She would hereafter, she said, provide for herself.  Except a small reservation for the benefit of the children, I complied with her direction.  No mandate of hers would I disobey.

So existence dragged on.  I resided in a humble dwelling with my two children.  Their presence did not soothe me,—­their infantile affection made no appeal to my heart,—­but their dependence claimed my care.—­Memories of Evelyn alone possessed me.  I secured full files of London papers, and watched for notices of her appearance.  At last they came.  A new star, the papers said, had suddenly appeared, unheralded, in the theatrical firmament, and rapidly culminated in the zenith.  She was understood to be an American lady, formerly an actress, who had returned to the stage on account of domestic difficulties.  Some papers intimated that her husband was a brute, who had forsaken her; others, that by a series of mischances she had been compelled to the stage to support a husband and numerous dependent relations.  Lengthy criticisms on her various performances were inserted, most of them stuffed with the pseudo-taste and finical ostentation of knowledge