the priedieu. He was still resolved to keep it, but earthly life
appeared less short, and he could not conceal from himself that, without
Barbara's sunny cheerfulness, bewitching tenderness, and, alas! without
her singing, his future existence would lack its greatest charm. His
life would be like this gloomy day. Put he would not relinquish what he
had once firmly determined and proved to himself by reasoning to be the
correct course.

He could not succeed in burying himself in charts and plans as usual and,
while imagining how life could be endured without the woman he loved, he
pushed the papers aside.

In days like these, when the old ache again attacked him, Barbara and
her singing had brightened the dreary gloom and lessened the pain, or
she had caressed and sung it entirely away. He seemed to himself like
a surly patient who throws aside the helpful medicine because it once
tasted badly to him and was an annoyance to others. Yet no. It
contained poison also, so it was wise to put it away. But had not Dr.
Mathys told him yesterday that the strongest remedial power was concealed
in poisons, and that they were the most effective medicines? Ought he
not to examine once more the reasons which had led him to this last
resolution? He bowed his head with an irresolution foreign to his
nature, and when his greyhound touched his aching foot he pushed the
animal angrily away.

The confessor De Soto found him in this mood at his first visit.

Ere he crossed the threshold he saw that Charles was suffering and felt
troubled by some important matter, and soon learned what he desired to
know. But if Charles expected the Dominican to greet his decision with