you how much do you believe a man willcan bear?"

"Sit still and hear me out," said Alston. "This simple rule," he continued, "this simple method this, more than what I was, has made me what I am, master of circumstance and of myself; has given me all that I possess wealth, power, the confidence of men. It is as unfailing now-when I am attempting to do mere justice to her; when, not flattering myself, I am the first man in my State-as when all that I had to resist was the push of an appetite, or the persuasion of the chance of small gain. No matter how complicated the circumstances, my rule never fails me. Motives are dexterous in specious pretenses, but what would she sayshe, who not knowing all that men know would yet know infinitely more? All else has been nothing, and is nothing, compared with the thought of her. That thought has been my strength, my test, my restraint, my impulsion. It is the vital point around which my life gathers- the nucleus of what otherwise would be baseless, unformed, empty. Life without this reality would be objectless, scattered, weak. Trego, understand me. I did not expect to know anything so soon. That I would have sought information of her and of you before I returned is true. Our meeting here to-night is of course purely accidental. Had I found you holding the place in the world expected of you, that she expected of you,— I would have said nothing. I would have gone, and neither of you would have seen me. But I have not found you occupying such position. I find you resorting to an expedient, to say the least of it, questionable, even if necessary to the earning of your livelihood. I ask you and remembering what Mary Hayden has unconsciously done for me, I have the right of a more than grateful man to ask itwhat have you done for her? Has she suffered ? has she been in want? does she suffer? is she in want now? Have you been as false to the promises that you made to her as you have to the promises you gave the world?"

"Had any other man spoken as you speak," said Trego, hoarsely, "he would suffer for it." "Not if he spoke as I speak," answered Alston quietly, almost solemnly. "Not if he spoke

with such a motive as mine. There is no rem

edy for the past. We can mend the present. We must assure the future. We cannot do that properly if every word is not the plain, severe truth. What would Mary Hayden say that I should do now if she knew all ?"

Trego did not answer. Both had been silent for some minutes when there came a rap at the door. Neither gave it attention, and Alston continued his walk. The knock was repeated.

"There is some one at the door," said Trego.

"Come in," commanded Alston.

A servant entered with a card.

"I must see him," said Alston, after he had taken it and glanced at the name it bore. "He is here in answer to my dispatch. I will be gone but for a moment. Wait here; I will meet him in the next room."

He drew a heavily wrought portière aside and passed through the doorway.

Trego did not leave his chair. He glanced at Alston as he disappeared; then, after a moment of irresolution, he drew a letter from his pocket and spread it out upon his knee, carefully smoothing down its creases and turning back its crumpled edges.

He nervously glanced about the room as if he was fearful that some one might see what it contained.

"If I were the man he thinks I am- if I were the man I thought myself—I would do it," he muttered. "I could shake the foundation of his self-satisfied assurance. I could make him feel something of what I have suffered. Hates me, does he? I hate him. Why? How has he hurt me? As success always hurts him who has failed. Because he candare offer me aid. But-shall I do him this harm? Shall I take from him that in losing which he says he would lose all? Rich as he is, shall I make him poorer than I am? Shall I rob him of his illusion of his reality? Because the coin is counterfeit shall I take it from him? And still, he hates me, and I—”

Bending low and with difficulty making out the faint and blotted lines scrawled on the coarse paper, without date or intimation of place, he read:

DEAR BILLY: When in my first love-letter I so wrote your name it was with something of the timidity with which I write it now, and yet how different the feeling! Then I wrote with joyous satisfaction, with shrinking, girlish glee; now I write in shame, and now I am afraid. I did not think then that, as a broken-hearted woman, borne down with the sense of all that she has done, I should write to you, unworthy of forgiveness as I am, and only daring to use that name that I may ask you really was. I cannot live long, Billy, they tell me, to remember what I once was to you - what I once

and it is really all that I can do to write this letter. I may die to-night, and I may live longer, and with something of my old strength; but the time will soon come when all that will be left of Mary Hayden will be her bitter memory in the mind of the man she loved with all the strength of which she was ever capable. For I have always loved you, Billy, in my way. All the time that I clogged your every effort, all the time I slowly but surely dragged you down, I loved you,-always in my way,-slight, perhaps, but still outlasting everything else. At the very last I loved you, strange as it may seem and

hard as it is to be believed. What I did was through flattered vanity and the need, fierce as an opium eater's, for things-trifles, yet so much to mewhich with only our narrowing means I could not have. Even the night when I went away, unnatural as it may seem, I remember thinking how much nicer it would be if you were going with us. It is absurd to have thought it at such a time, but I wanted you to go too-I really did. I was not bad, Billy, I was not. I never could quite see, feel things as others did; I believe I never had what they call a moral sense. But I did so like pretty things, gayety, joy, abundance of bright life. But I am not attempting a vindication. I only wish before I die to tell you the truth, to tell you the remorse I feel for what I have done to you. I have ruined you and I know it. You would have been a good man, perhaps a great man, if it had not been for me.

Everybody I once knew, for whom I cared, thinks me dead-every one but you. It was the least I could do, after leaving you, to help you in the deception. And it is the bitter truth that I am dead. Every hope, every joy that belonged to Mary Hayden has passed away. I am not what I was, a woman yet to suffer, but am dead to you, and dead to all once so very pleasant, so very dear. And I do not tell you what I suffer. I believe even now it would give you pain could you know, and I am silent. If the girl you married could cling to your heart one moment,-sin and suffering have left her a woman even yet, and she would not hurt the man she loved,-agony could not wring from her even one murmur. It may come, for you have not succeeded in the world, and suffering explains so much, softens so much, teaches us to pardon so much it may come some moment of tenderness at thought of some little thing; not when our lips met, for such thoughts madden, but of some time when my hand just touched your arm and I laughed up in your face, happy in mocking caprice-some moment of tenderness when you might even wish to see me. But do not seek to do it. I long, but I could not bear it, Billy. Could you? And I will not tell you where I am.

I am dead; and if, as some say, remorse is the punishment that awaits our sins hereafter, I am already in hell. I know the anguish of ineffectual repentance. My guilt stands out in all its naked hideousness, without any of the palliations with which I once clothed it, and I recognize the evil I have always been: do you think that He will punish us that way? He knows we are women and how weak we are. Is it just that the weak should suffer most? If it were so, annihilation were far kinder than a merciful Father. If we sin, how much are we overtempted, how weak to withstand temptation! I know that He will be kind to us. One of us was the mother of the Child.

I can hardly write any more. Why I have written at all, I have told you. I am sorry. That is all I can say. If you can feel more kindly towards me because I feel so kindly towards you,—she who I was would say so much more than this, I would be glad. But do not seek to have me know it. I shall soon be where if it be possible to know anything I shall know all, and if one does not, then it does not

matter.

Good-bye, Billy. I owe you the happiest and

best days of my life, and, weak creature that I was, you held me for a long time above myself. I should like to feel that this poor letter even for one moment has softened you towards me, and so made some one better-better through me, who have made so many worse. Good-bye. I am sorry. Good-bye. MARY.

He ceased reading and sat resting his head upon his hand, gathering the skin of his forehead between his fingers, as is the habit of some men when lost in thought.

"I can't do it," he muttered hoarsely. "I would not darken her heaven; I would not add one agony to her hell. It might be justification of myself, revenge upon him, but I cannot show him that letter. But they say He knows. He trusted me. Perhaps there is some good left in me after all."

He was so absorbed that he did not notice when Alston entered the room. He said nothing to him, even when he had crossed the floor and stood silently before him.

"I am waiting for your answer," said Alston.

"Wait," he replied roughly.

out. The evening was well advanced, but the He rose, went to the window and looked crowds from the theaters soon to fill the walks had not yet appeared. The square and the converging streets were dismal, almost slimy, repulsive, shining as they were from the just fallen rain. The sharp shadows made by the electric lights, heavy and distinct as the border of a mourning-card, seemed to edge everything-to harden what he saw into greater and more impressive severity.

"What have you to say?" demanded Alston.

"Nothing," replied Trego.

Then he turned, faced Alston for a moment, and added:

"She died five years ago." Alston stood rigidly erect. "Died!" he said; "died and yet it is better so. But stand there she is no man's now. I too have my rights. Tell me did she die before - did she know—" "What I am?" said Trego fiercely. "Drop that. You had better."

"I will know the truth."

"I swear, Henry Alston," said Trego, in a tone that dispelled all doubt—“I swear that she suffered nothing from me. I swear it to you by all that there is left to me to hold sacred."

"And I believe you," answered Alston; " and it is well that I do. If I did not, I would shoot you down where you stand." "Possibly," said Trego, with harsh, rattling, enigmatical laugh.

He rose and moved towards the table in the center of the room.

"Will you allow me?" he added. "A lady's letter. I must see that it reaches no other hands."

He held the paper to the gaslight and the two men stood watching the eager flame snatch at it, watched the play of the yellow blaze, saw the blackening, writhing edges as the paper burned, saw the light ashes fall and pass from sight-watched, and said nothing. Would either have spoken had either thought how typical it was of a lost life?

The rain had stopped some time before, but the air seemed still heavy with moisture. A thin fog had come up suddenly and the usual bright coronal above the trees in the small park was dimmed, and the light lay in only dull, overspreading glow. As the two men stepped upon the walk, the crowd from the theater close at hand had just begun to break upon the street.

"I could not stay inside," said Alston. "There's a life in every breath of air."

Trego said nothing.

"I am going back to-morrow," continued Alston.

"Yes," replied Trego, absently.

Both men spoke as if there was but little left for which they might care. They seemed bewildered, lost, as if chaos had suddenly turned to blank space vacancy without confine.

They walked in silence up the avenue. Then suddenly there came, dull and yet distinct, that ominous sound that means so much to the dwellers in cities, to every one who knows what it is,—the rush, the clang, the nearing, passing, departing something that brings to mind dark thoughts of disease, of casualty, of crime, of the long silent suffering of the sick-bed, of the mutilation of sudden accident, of the direful wrongs man dares do to man; a sound that brings to mind thoughts of the hospital, the knife, the grave. No man loiters so carelessly that he will not turn in sudden gravity when he hears it; none is so busy that he will not pause as it comes to his ear, a throbbing, dominating sound, heard now above the rattle of glittering equipages giving way before it, and now, at midnight, lessening down the distance of some deserted street. Alston scarcely noticed the ambulance as it approached.

People farther along were gathered about

the edge of the sidewalk, and Trego hastened on alone. What led him to thrust aside those who stood in his way?

A woman lay upon the pavement, her head resting upon the curb-stone as upon a pillow. With quick, sharp exclamation he started back. The gathering whiteness, the tightening rigidity of his face, could be plainly seen beneath the hard, brutal glare of the electric light. He fell upon his knees, and drawing a handkerchief from his pocket dropped it over the upturned face.

The ambulance came to a sudden stop. The young physician who came with it sprung out and made a hurried examination, utterly disregarding the kneeling man, but in a minute he instinctively turned to him with significant gesture.

"She is dead?" asked Trego.

The young man bowed his head, and with that instantaneous something that, when occasion comes, tells any man whither to turn for aid, he said:

"What is it?" repeated Alston, taking Trego by the arm. Trego started.

"The end of a tragedy," he answered steadily, rigidly.

Then, after a moment, he added abruptly: "Let me have some money. I have n't a dollar. I must have money to-night. I 'll need it to-morrow. It is the only way I can get it, and I must have it. Let me have some money. Do you hear me? Money! I will repay it; you may be sure of that."

"Would she say that I should if she knew?" asked Alston.

"Yes," answered Trego, more quietly—"if she knew all that you have told me to-night."

George A. Hibbard.