"'Hermione,' she cried, 'if you throw yourself into that pool, I shall follow you. I will not live ten minutes after you. Do you know why? Because I--_I_ caused you that scar which has been the torment of your life. It was when we were children--babes, and I have only known it since last night. Auntie Lovell told me, in her sympathy for you and her desire to make me more sisterly. The knowledge has crushed me, Hermione; it has made me hate myself and love you. Nothing I can do now can ever atone for what I did then; though I was so young, it was anger that gave me strength to deal the blow which has left this indelible mark behind it. Isn't it terrible? I the one to blame and you the one to suffer!--But there must be no dying, Hermione, no dying, or I shall feel myself a murderess. And you do not want to add that horror to my remorse, now that I am old enough to feel remorse, and realize your suffering. You will be a little merciful and live for my sake if not for your own.' "She was clinging to me, her face white and drawn, upturned towards mine with pitiful pleading, but I had no words with which to comfort her, nor could I feel as yet any relenting in my fixed purpose. Seeing my unmoved look she burst into sobs, then she cried suddenly: "'I see I must prepare to die too. But not to-day, Hermione. Wait a month, just one month, and then if you choose to rush upon your fate, I will not seek to deter you, I will simply share it; but not to-day, not in this rush of maddened feeling. Life holds too much,--may yet give you too much, for any such reckless disregard of its prospects. Give it one chance, then, and me one chance--it is all I ask. One month of quiet waiting and then--decision.' "I knew no month would make any difference with me, but her passionate pleading began to work upon my feelings. "'It will be a wretched time for me,' said I, 'a purgatory which I shall be glad to escape.' "'But for my sake,' she murmured, 'for my sake; I am not ready to die yet, and your fate--I have said it--shall be mine.' "'For your sake then,' I cried, and drew back from the dangerous brink upon which we had both been standing. 'But do not think,' I added, as we paused some few feet away, 'that because I yield now, I will yield then. If after a month of trying to live, I find myself unable, I shall not consult you, Emma, as to my determination, any more than I shall expect you to embrace my doom because in the heat of your present terror you have expressed your intention of doing so.' "'Your fate shall be my fate, as far as I myself can compass it,' she reiterated. And I, angry at what I thought to be an unwarrantable attempt to put a check upon me, cried out in as bitter a tone as I had ever used: "'So be it,' and turned myself towards home." XXI. IN THE LABORATORY.