“I am glad you did so. The sight of his beaming face would have recalled memories that would have made me doubly sad.” “Yes, the period of your triumphs before I cast my dark and grim shadow over the sunshine of your life. Woe is me!” “And do you think,” said Ouida, with infinite tenderness, “that I regret you?” “That is the very thought that sears my soul. I know my wrong to you. Yet through it all your brave smile remains. Oh! for the power to blot out the past; to dower you with the past.” “I would refuse the gift,” said Ouida, “if I could not share my life with you. You seem fevered tonight, love. Any good results today?” “No, dearest, only added torment,” said he, sadly. “You remember last week I left my manuscript with Dixon & Company, the publishers? Their reader told me to call today. I did, with large hope and expectations. I was ushered into his office, furnished with artistic taste. ‘Your work,’ said he, ‘is clever and original, but I have made some inquiries about you. You are Nugent, the preacher, are you not, who was concerned in an escapade with Ouida Angelo?’ I could not and would not deny my connection with you. ‘I like your work,’ said he, ‘but our house cannot afford to insult society, which it certainly would do, if we fathered anything from your pen.’ With a careless nod he handed me my bundle of papers and dismissed me. And as I left, my heart almost bursting with indignation, I wished you again upon the very throne of art, that you might tear out my soul, and use it as a model for a creation, ‘The Agony of Despair.’” “Come, Horatio, lay your head upon my knee and let me soothe your aching brow.” He gladly complied with her sweet suggestion. There was a brief silence, when, looking up into her face, he suddenly said: “Do you not think, Ouida, that you and I have fairly tried the world?” “Yes,” said she, firmly, “and surely we have reached the end.” “Think you self-destruction is ever justified?” “Have you abandoned hope so completely,” she said, “that you let such dark visions come into your mind?” “I am full of despair tonight,” said Nugent, gloomily. “I see naught before me save the impregnable wall of fate. I can neither break through its thickness, nor scale its height.” “True,” said Ouida, dreamily, “our lives have utterly failed, and if we quietly sought oblivion, the world would wag its tongue for one brief hour, then would speedily forget that we ever lived.” Horatio rose to his feet, and said with impressive solemnity: “I have thought that when two, through their love, pure in itself, had gained but grief and tears, when they had reached that point when starvation, both of body and soul, confronted them like a hideous spectre; when their pride had been stung by pity; when love views love with more than mortal agony, affording no hope; Oh, Ouida, beloved, I have thought ’twere best to end it all with one bold stroke, and solve the mystery of the fate beyond the stars!”