“And if I lose,” he said—­holding up something before him which I took to be a picture, though it was in the shape of a heart—­“and if I lose, then perish all of earth to me.  But leave me only this, and should I hold you thus, and gaze on what I have first and last and only loved until this perishable material on which I have placed you turn to dust, still will you be graven on a heart whose deathless love can know no death; for a thing so holy as the love I bear you was not made to die.”

My work—­now my completed work—­dropped beneath my fingers, for the last stitch was taken.

If I could not prevent his self-torture, he should not, at least, torture me longer; and snatching the thing from his grasp, I exclaimed as I closed my hands over it, “Now, before I return it, you must, you shall, promise me that you will take the last advice I gave you; or will you allow me to look at it, and then unseal the silent lips and give you the prophetic little ‘yes’ or ‘no’ which a professed physiognomist like your confidante can always read in the eye?”

“I would rather you did the last,” he said; and I rose, leaned my elbow on the corner of the mantel nearest the gaslight, rested my head on my empty hand, so as to shade my eyes from the intensity of the brilliant burner near me, and with the awe creeping over me with which the old astrologers read the horoscope of the midnight stars, I looked, and saw—­only a wonderfully faithful copy of the portrait hanging just over me, of which Mr. Tennent Tremont’s confidante was the original.  I threw it from me, and burst into tears.  He stood quite near me.  I thought I hated him, but my obtuse, blundering, idiotic self more than him.  I waved my hand in token either of his silence or withdrawal, for in all my life long I, with a whole dictionary in my mind of abusive epithets, was never more at a loss for a word.  My token was unheeded.

He only murmured softly,

  I had never seen thee weeping: 
  I cannot leave thee now.

When you snatched my picture from me a moment ago I saw a glistening tear of sympathy in your eye; but what are these?”

“So cruel! so ungenerous! so unfair!” I said, still pressing my hands tightly over my eyes.  “How can I ever forgive you?”

With softer murmur than the last he repeated the words,

  “’Tis sweet to let the pardoned in.”

“Astounding presumption that!” I said, now giving him the benefit of my full gaze—­“to speak of pardon before making a confession of your guilt!  But before I give you time even for that, the remaining mysteries which still hang around your tale of woe shall be cleared up.  Please to inform the court how the original of your purloined sketch could have been the object of years of devotion, when it has been only four weeks to-day since you laid your mortal eyes on her?”

“Ah! you may well say mortal; but you know the soul too has its visual organs.  I saw and loved and worshiped my ideal in those years, and sought her too—­how unceasingly!—­and I said,