the completeness of youth was gone, and with that lost completeness
the whole value and savor of life had diminished somewhat. Should she
not always bear within her the seeds of sadness and mistrust, ready to
grow up and rob emotion of its springtide of fervor? Conscious she
must always be that nothing could give her now the happiness so longed
for, that seemed so fair in her dreams. The fire from heaven that
sheds abroad its light in the heart, in the dawn of love, had been
quenched in tears, the first real tears which she had shed; henceforth
she must always suffer, because it was no longer in her power to be
what once she might have been. This is a belief which turns us in
aversion and bitterness of spirit from any proffered new delight.

Julie had come to look at life from the point of view of age about to
die. Young though she felt, the heavy weight of joyless days had
fallen upon her, and left her broken-spirited and old before her time.
With a despairing cry, she asked the world what it could give her in
exchange for the love now lost, by which she had lived. She asked
herself whether in that vanished love, so chaste and pure, her will
had not been more criminal than her deeds, and chose to believe
herself guilty; partly to affront the world, partly for her own
consolation, in that she had missed the close union of body and soul,
which diminishes the pain of the one who is left behind by the
knowledge that once it has known and given joy to the full, and
retains within itself the impress of that which is no more.

Something of the mortification of the actress cheated of her part
mingled with the pain which thrilled through every fibre of her heart
and brain. Her nature had been thwarted, her vanity wounded, her
woman's generosity cheated of self-sacrifice. Then, when she had
raised all these questions, set vibrating all the springs in those