Alas, poor, deluded Richard! He did not know that to attain this very object, Arthur had said what he did. It is true, he meant every word he uttered. Matrimony and Edith Hastings must not be thought of together. That were worse than madness, and his better judgment warned him not to see too much of her--told him it was better far to have that sightless man beside them when they met together in a relation so intimate as the teacher bears to his pupil. But Arthur would not listen; Edith was the first who for years had really touched a human chord in his palsied heart, and the vibration would not cease without a fiercer struggle than he cared to make. It could do no harm, he said. He had been so unhappy--was so unhappy now. Edith would, of course, be Richard's wife; he had foreseen that from the very first--had predicted it long ago, but ere the sacrifice was made, he was surely pardonable if, for a little while, he gave himself to the bewildering intoxication of basking in the sunshine of her eyes, of bending so near to her that he could feel her fragrant breath, feel the warm glow of her cheek, of holding those little hands a moment in his own after he had ceased to teach her fingers how to guide the pencil. All this passed in rapid review before his mind while his lips uttered the words which had so delighted Richard, and when he saw the shadow on Edith's face, his poor, aching heart throbbed with a joy as wild and intense as it was hopeless and insane. This was Arthur St. Claire with Edith present, but with Edith gone, he was quite another man. Eagerly he watched her till she disappeared from view, then returning to the library he sat down where she had sat--laid his head upon the table where her hands had lain, and cursed himself for daring to dream of love in connection with Edith Hastings. It would be happiness for a time, he knew, to hang upon her smile, to watch the lights and shadows of her speaking face, to look into her eyes--those clear, truthful eyes which had in them no guile. All this would be perfect bliss, were it not that the end must come at last--the terrible end--remorse bitterer than death for him, and for her--the pure, unsullied, trusting Edith--ruin, desolation, and madness, it might be. "Yes, MADNESS!" he exclaimed aloud, "hateful as the word may sound." And he gnashed his teeth as it dropped from between them. "No, Edith, no. Heaven helping me, I will not subject you to this temptation. I will not drag you down with me, and yet, save Griswold, there lives not the person who knows my secret. May be he could be bought. Oh, the maddening thought. Am I a demon or a brute?" And he leaped from his chair, cursing himself again and again for having fallen so low as to dream of an act fraught with so much wrong to Edith, and so much treachery to one as fair, as beautiful as she, and far, far more to be pitied.