“Yes--call, monsieur, call loud. There is none to hear. No one can help her now. This is the time for which I prayed in the cold, silent dungeon at Clairvaux--for which I prayed as I toiled, and it has come--come at last. Lucille, dearest wife--ah, how beautiful you are--will you embrace me once again? Thus, with the knife between us, the hilt to my breast, the point to thine? Shall we clasp each other in our arms once more, or shall I wait and see the waves slowly rise, and rise, and rise till they sweep above your head?” She uttered no sound now for the moment, but kept her eyes fixed upon him, while Onslow strove vainly to call for help--to go to the woman’s aid, but every nerve seemed chained, and he could only gaze down as the man glided round the rock which parted him from his wife, holding the knife-hilt against his breast. Then, heard above the roar of the waves, Lucille’s voice rang out inarticulately as she still clung there, her back to the rock, her arms outstretched. It was the cry of the rat driven to the corner from which there is no escape, and in his agony Onslow lay there, watching the _dénouement_ of the tragedy, perfectly helpless to save. CHAPTER XXIII. BY “TASMA.” Our nineteenth century, as we are all aware, is nothing if not analytical. Chemists spend days and nights in examining into the properties of some apparently unimportant compound, and do not abandon their task until they have ascertained the exact proportions in which primal gases are blended in its composition. In the same way, men of science, dissectors of motives, and these curious lay-preachers, the French novelists, take some complicated sentiment of the human heart and twist it round, and turn it inside out, and expend themselves in efforts to trace it back to its origin through the influences of heredity or idiosyncrasy, or a predominance of white or red globules in the blood. Their researches are not always as fertile in results as those of the chemists, for in every human organization there enters an unknown quantity which upsets the calculations of all the physiologists and psychologists combined. Nevertheless, they carry on their labors undaunted, and it may be said of them, as of the alchemists of old, that if they do not find the philosopher’s stone, they make at least occasional discoveries which help to bring about a better understanding of human needs and weaknesses. It is unnecessary to say that the sentiment of love, or the condition of a man or woman under the influence of this sentiment, is the favorite object of their investigations. And the more it is entangled with other sentiments, such, for instance, as those of duty or honor or pride or passion, the better they are pleased; for, like the chemists with their unknown compound, they can give full vent to their analytical skill in pulling it to pieces, and proving to their own satisfaction that it is made up of all manner of minor mingled sentiments, and is in fact nothing but a