study and work, while my heart was almost breaking; for the doctors had told me she required wine and nourishing food, and I was earning barely sufficient to pay for the commonest necessaries. One night when I left the theatre, the rain was pouring down like a second deluge. I had been playing the principal parts in tragedy and comedy, and I came into the street hot and flushed with my exertions. It was the last night I ever played. The rain soaked me to the skin; but I took no heed of that; I was too anxious to reach home. I crept into our one room, and found my wife asleep. I sat by her side and looked at her pale face, and recalled the past. I saw her as she had been five years before, a bright and beautiful girl; and as she was now, pale and wan as a ghost. I heard her whisper, "Until death, Basil--until death!" I threw myself on my knees by the bedside, and hid my face on the bed in utter prostration; and while I knelt, my body turned cold as ice, then hot as fire, and a feeling like the feeling of death came upon me. "_Is_ it death?" I asked myself; and I almost rejoiced at the thought that we might pass away together. When I raised my head, the room seemed to be thronged with visible fancies. The light and brilliancy of the theatre; the dark night with its down-pour of rain; Alice as she was when I first met her; my father's study, and he and I looking defiantly at each other; all these pictures, and many others, were before me, and for a moment seemed to be in harmony with each other. Unutterable confusion among them followed; and then a darkness fell upon me. Weeks passed before the darkness cleared away. When I recovered my senses, I found my patient angel nursing me, although she was scarcely stronger than I was. But what will not a woman's love accomplish? We were not in the same town in which I had fallen sick. She had removed me to a village some twenty miles distant from my native place. I did not discover this until I was able to rise and move about. I was but a shadow of myself; all my strength had left me, and I was like a child. I was to discover something worse than that. I was to discover that my memory was gone, and that, although I could repeat snatches of parts I had played, I could not, study as hard as I would--and I tried diligently during my convalescence--get the complete parts into my head. My wife helped me--looked at the book while I stumbled on--prompted me, encouraged me, bade me rest for a day and try again. All in vain. If I was rehearsing the scenes in "Hamlet," speeches and lines uttered by Macbeth and Lear, interpolated themselves, and I grew hopelessly confused.