should remain at a Paris hotel till he could return to her. In
the first years after their marriage she objected vehemently.
She was so young, so unused to solitude, that she felt a
certain terror at the prospect of being left alone; and,
moreover, she still clung with a sort of desperation to her
girlish illusions, and, loving her husband, could not cease to
believe in his love for her. She had plans, too, for reforming
him, and for a long time would not allow herself to be
convinced of their utter vanity and hopelessness. After the
death of her little boys, however, she became more
indifferent, or more resigned. And so it came to pass that
when she had been married about six years, and four months
after her third child was born, Madame Linders died, alone at
a Paris hotel, with no one near her but the doctor, her baby's
nurse, and the woman of the house. She had dictated a few
words to tell her husband, who was then in Germany, that she
was dying; and, stricken with a horrible remorse, he had
travelled with all possible haste to Paris, and arrived at
daybreak one morning to find that his wife had died the
evening before.

Madame Linders' death had been caused by a fever, under which
she had sunk rapidly at last. There had been no question of
heart-breaking or pining grief here--so her husband thought
with a sort of satisfaction even then, as he remembered his
sister's words of bitter reproach over their mother's death-
bed; and yet not the less, as he looked at his dead wife's
face, did the reflection force itself upon him, that he had
made the misery instead of the happiness of her life. He was a
man who had accustomed himself to view things from the hardest