Finished!--for her--all the small feminine joys.

Was there one of her dresses that did not in some way speak to her of Manisty ?--that had not been secretly planned with a view to tastes and preferences she had come to know hardly less intimately than her own?
She thought of the face of the Orvieto doctor, of certain words that she had stopped on his lips because she was afraid to hear them.

A sudden terror of death,--of the desolate, desolate end swept upon her.

To die, with this cry of the heart unspent, untold for ever! Unloved, unsatisfied, unrewarded--she whose whole nature gave itself--gave itself perpetually, as a wave breaks upon a barren shore.

How can any God send human beings into the world for such a lot?
There can be no God.