“Don’t speak to me, Arthur Beresford,” she cried, and there was something awful in the tone of her voice. “Don’t come near me, or I may do you harm. I am not myself to-day, I’m that _other_ one you have never seen. I know what you are here for without your telling me. You have come to talk to me of Phil, to say you are sorry for me, sorry he is dead, but I will not hear it. You, of all men, shall not speak his name to me, guilty as you are of his death. _I_ sent him away. _I_ murdered him, but you were the first cause; you suggested to me the cruel words I said to him, and which no man could hear and not go away. You talked of _Sardanapalus_, and effeminacy, and weakness, and lack of occupation, and every word was a sneer, because, coward that you were, you thought to raise yourself by lowering him, and fool that I was, when he came to me and told me of a love such as you are incapable of feeling, I spurned him and cast your words into his teeth and made him loathe and despise himself and made him go away, to seek the _occupation_, to build up the _manhood_ you said he lacked; and now he is dead, drowned in those far off eastern waters, my Phil, my love, my darling. I am not ashamed to say it now. There is nothing unmaidenly in the confession that I love him as few men have ever been loved, and I wish I had told him so that night upon the rocks; I wish I had trampled down that scruple of cousinship which looks to me now so small. But I did not, I broke his heart, and saw it breaking, too; I knew it by the awful look upon his face, not a look of disappointment only; he could have borne that; few men, if any, die of love alone; but there was on his face a look of unutterable shame and humiliation as if all the manliness of his nature had been insulted by my taunts of his womanish habits and ways. Oh, Phil, my love, my love; if he could know how my heart is aching for him and will ache on forever until I find him again somewhere in the other world! Don’t speak to me” she continued, as Mr. Beresford tried to say something. “I tell you I am dangerous in these moods, and the sight of you who are the first cause of my anguish, makes me beside myself. You talked some nonsense once about waiting for my love. I told you then it could not be. I tell it to you now a thousand times more strongly. I would rather be Phil’s wife for one second than to be yours through all eternity. Oh, Phil, my love, if I could die and join him; but life is strong within me and I am young and must live on and on for years and years with that death-cry always sounding in my ears as it sounded that awful night when he went down beneath the waters with my name upon his lips. Where was I that I did not hear it, and know that he was dying? If I had heard it I believe I, too, should have died and joined him on his journey through the shades of death. But there was no signal; I did not hear him call, and laughed on as I shall never laugh again, for how can