Something, she did not too clearly explain what, had grieved her, and she gave free expression to her feelings.

"I have no one that loves me but you," she said; "and if you leave me I must droop and die.

Are you true to me, dearest Clement,--true as when we promised each other that we would love while life lasted?
Or have you forgotten one who will never cease to remember that she was once your own Susan ?" Clement dropped the letter from his hand, and sat a long hour looking at the exquisitely wrought features of her who had come between him and honor and his plighted word.
At length he arose, and, lifting the bust tenderly from its pedestal, laid it upon the cloth with which it had been covered.

He wrapped it closely, fold upon fold, as the mother whom man condemns and God pities wraps the child she loves before she lifts her hand against its life.
Then he took a heavy hammer and shattered his lovely idol into shapeless fragments.

The strife was over..