"I think," Claudia decided, in her common-sense tone, "that you are nursing this unholy passion, Ideala. You are afraid to give it up lest there should be nothing left to you. Can you not free your mind from the trammels of it, and grasp something higher, better, and nobler? Can you not become mistress of yourself again, and enter on a larger life which shall be full of love--not the narrow, selfish passion you are cherishing for one, but that pure and holy love which only the best-- and such women as you may always be of the best--can feel for all? If you could but get the fumes of this evil feeling out of yourself, you would see, as we see, what a common thing it is, and you would recognise, as we recognise, that your very expression of it is just such as is given to it by every hysterical man or woman that has ever experienced it. It is a physical condition caused by contact, and kept up by your own perverse pleasure in it--nothing more. Every one grows out of it in time, and any one with proper self-control could conquer it. You are wavering yourself. You see, now that you have crystallised the feeling into words, that it is a pitiful thing after all, that the object is not worth such an expenditure of strength--certainly not worth the sacrifice of your power to enjoy anything else. Such devotion to the memory of a dead husband has been thought grand by some, although for my part I can see nothing grand in any form of self- indulgence, whether it be the indulgence of sorrow or joy, which narrows our sphere of usefulness, and causes us to neglect the claims of those who love us upon our affection, and the claims of our fellow- creatures generally upon our consideration; but in your case it is simply----" Claudia paused for want of a word. "You would say it is simply degrading," Ideala interposed. "I do not feel it so. I glory in it." "I know," said Claudia, pitilessly. "You all do." And then she got up, and laid her hand on Ideala's shoulder. "It is time," she said, earnestly, "It is time, O passionate heart and morbid eye, That old hysterical mock-disease should die." CHAPTER XXVIII.