hath my lot been cast; and if I have wrought out from the dreams of my
young hours the course of this life (which you contemn, but not justly),
it has been that I may stand alone and not dependent; feared and not
despised. And now you, you whom I admire and envy, and would reverence
more than living woman (for he loves you and deems you worthy of him),
you, lady, speak to me as a sister would speak, and--and----" Here sobs
interrupted Lucilla's speech; and Constance herself, almost equally
affected, and finding it vain to attempt to raise her, knelt by her side,
and tenderly caressing her, sought to comfort her, even while she wept in
doing so.

And this was a beautiful passage in the life of the lofty Constance.
Never did she seem more noble than when, thus lowly and humbling herself,
she knelt beside the poor victim of her husband's love, and whispered to
the diseased and withering heart tidings of comfort, charity, home, and a
futurity of honour and of peace. But this was not a dream that could long
lull the perturbed and erring brain of Lucilla Volktman. And when she
recovered, in some measure, her self-possession, she rose, and throwing
back the wild hair from her throbbing temples, she said, in a calm and
mournful voice:

"Your kindness comes too late. I am dying, fast--fast. All that is left
to me in the world are these very visions, this very power--call it
delusion if you will--from which you would tear me. Nay, look not so
reproachfully, and in such wonder. Do you not know that men have in
poverty, sickness, and all outer despair, clung to a creative spirit
within--a world peopled with delusions--and called it Poetry? and that
gift has been more precious to them than all that wealth and pomp could
bestow? So," continued Lucilla, with fervid and insane enthusiasm, "so is
this, my creative spirit, my imaginary world, my inspiration, what poetry