round of pleasures that, with them, constituted work. Now, alone, in her solitary prison-room, Laure of Le Crépuscule reviewed her high and holy noon of love, forgetting its subsequence, brooding only over its supreme forgetfulness, till the madness of it was tingling in her every vein, and there rushed over her again, in a tumultuous wave, all that fierce longing, all that hopeless desire, that she thought herself to have endured for the last time. In their early days Flammecœur had been so much her companion, so devoted to her in little, pretty, telling ways, so constant to her and to her alone, that the thought of any life other than the one with him would have been to her like a promise of eternal death. It was not more their hours of delirium than those of silent communion that they had held together, which brought her now the tears of hopeless yearning. All that she desired without him, was death. All that she had loved or cared for was with him. At this time came to her the thought of Lenore; and she had an instinctive feeling that, had God seen fit to give her that most precious of all gifts, motherhood, this penitential cell had not been the end for her. Three days and three nights did Laure spend in this state of bitter rebellion against her lot; and then, from over-wishing, came a change. Up to this time, in her new flood of grief for the separation from Flammecœur, she had driven from her mind every creeping memory of the day of his change toward her. Another woman had come upon the horizon of his life: a young and noble Englishwoman, of high station. And soon he was pursuing her with the ardor that he no longer spent on Laure. This lady was one of the first that they had met in England, and Laure had liked her before Flammecœur’s new passion began to develop. But with her first real fears, the poor girl’s jealousy was born, and soon it became the moving spirit of her life. Many times in the ensuing weeks—those bitter weeks of early autumn—did angry words pass between her and her protector, her only shield from the world in this strange land. Once, in a fit of uncontrollable grief and passion, she had left him, and for two days wandered about the streets of London till starvation drove her back to the lodgings of the Flaming-heart. Her reception—of quiet indifference—on her return showed her that her world was in a state of dissolution. For a week she dwelt among its ruins, and then, when she demanded it, he told her that she was no longer dear to him, and he begged her to take what money he had and to set out whither she would, assuring her that she would find no difficulty in securing some excellent abiding-place in this adopted land. Laure took her dismissal heroically. She knew him too well to be horrified at his suggestions as to her procedure; and, refusing his gifts of money, she sold the clothes and ornaments that he had given her in a happier day, and with the proceeds started on her return to Crépuscule.