Amid all her pain of the night and the morning, one question was ever repeating itself, "Will this last?" That the fever which burned her was love--genuine love--the regular old love of the romances and the poets--she could not doubt. She knew it because it was so new a feeling. Had she walked among a fever-stricken population, refusing to believe in the danger of infection, and satisfied that the fearless and the wise were safe, and had she suddenly felt the strange pains and unfamiliar heats, and found the senses beginning to wander, she would have known that this was fever. The pangs of death are new to all alike when they come, but those who are about to die are conscious--even in their last moments of consciousness--that this new summons has the one awful meaning. So did Minola know only too well what the meaning was of this new pain. "Will it last?" was her cry to herself. "Shall I have to go through life with this torture always to bear? Is it true that women have to bear this for years and years--that some of them never get over it? Oh, I shall never get over it--never, never!" she cried out in bitterness. She was very bitter now against herself and fate. She did not feel that it is better to love vainly than not at all. Indeed, such consoling conviction belongs to the poet who philosophizes on love, or to the disappointed lover who is already beginning to be consoled. It does not do much good to any one in the actual hour of pain. Minola cordially and passionately wished that she had not loved, or seen any one whom she could love. She was full of wrath and scorn for herself, and believed herself humbled and shamed. Her whole life was crossed; her quiet was all gone; she was now doomed to an existence of perpetual self-constraint and renunciation, and even deception. She had a secret which she must conceal from the world as if it was a murder. She must watch her words, her movements, her very glances, lest any sudden utterance, or gesture, or blush should betray her. She would wake in the night in terror, lest in some dream she might have called out some word or name which had roused Mary Blanchet in the next room, and betrayed her. She must meet Victor Heron, heaven knows how often, and talk with him as a friend, and never let one gleam of the truth appear. She must hear Lucy Money tell of her love, and be the _confidante_ of her childlike emotions. Not often, perhaps, has a proud and sensitive girl been tried so strangely. "I thought I hated men before," she kept saying to herself. "I _do_ hate them now; and women and all. I hate him most of all because I know that I so love him."