feet."

She looked up at him for a moment and breathed a single word--a name
that seemed to escape her lips quite involuntarily--"Claudia!"

"Yes, my darling," he said, in tones vibrating with emotion, "it is
as you suppose, or rather it was so! You have divined my secret,
which indeed I never intended to keep as a secret from you. Yes,
Bee; I loved another before loving you. I loved her whom you have
just named. I love her no longer. When by her marriage with another
my love would have become sinful, it was sentenced to death and
executed. But, Bee, it died hard, very hard; and in its violent
death-throes it rent and tore my heart, as the evil spirit did the
possessed man, when it was driven out of him. Bee, my darling," said
Ishmael, smiling for the first time since commencing the interview,
"this may seem to you a very fanciful way of putting the case; but
is a good one, for in no other manner could I give you to understand
how terrible my sufferings have been for the last few weeks, how
completely my evil passion has perished; and yet how sore and weak
it has left my heart. Bee, it is this heart, wounded and bleeding
from a dead love, yet true and single in its affection for you, that
I open before you and lay at your feet. Spurn it away from you, Bee,
and I cannot blame you. Raise it to your own and I shall love and
bless you."

Bee burst into tears.

He put his arm around her and drew her to his side and she dropped
her head upon his shoulder and wept passionately. Many times she
tried to speak, but failed. At last, when she had exhausted all her