"You scarcely speak in your right mind yet, Julia. Be quiet,

therefore, and try to sleep."

"Well, if you will sit beside me."

"I will do so, since you wish for it; but where's the need?"

"Ah! do not ask the need, if you still love me," was all she

said, and looked at me with such eyes--so tearful, bright, so sad,

soliciting--that, though I did not less doubt, I could no longer

deny. I resumed the seat beside her. She again placed her fingers

in my hair, and in a little while sunk into a profound slumber,

only broken by an occasional sob, which subsided into a sigh.

Were she guilty--such was the momentary suggestion of the good

angel--could she sleep thus?--thus quietly, confidingly, beside the

man she had wronged--her fingers still paddling in his hair--her

sleeping eyes still turning in the direction of his face?

To the clear, open mind, the suggestion would have had the force

of a conclusive argument; but mine was no longer a clear, open

mind. I had the disease of the blind heart upon me, and all things

came out upon my vision as through a glass, darkly. The evil one

at my elbow jeered when the good angel spoke.

"Fool! does she not see that she can blind you still!" Then, in

the vanity and vexation of my spirit, I mused upon it further, and

said to myself:--"Ay, but she will find, ere many days, that I am

no longer to be blinded!" The scales were never thicker upon my

sight than when I boasted in this foolish wise.




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