"No. What was in it? Has any thing happened to Dr. Ashton?" "Yes," Herman said slowly, wondering in a baffled way if 'it was possible to soften the blow. "He is dead." "Dead!" Her cry rang out sharply in the dim studio, over that clay figure of a lifeless warrior. A cry of horror, of pain, and, too, of remorse. There was in it nothing of love, only that nameless fear that death brings, and still more that groundless self-reproach which sensitive natures must feel when confronted by the irremediable--as if some blame must be taken for the acts of fate. Imaginative natures never quite shake off the responsibility of the inevitable, and Helen began instinctively to question herself. The scene of the previous night came before her. Ought she to have yielded to the love which had called her, late aftermath of a blighted wedded life? At least when her husband spoke of his suffering she might more strongly--A sudden thought pierced her like a knife. "How did he die?" she questioned breathlessly. "Of heart disease." So then the world would not know the truth, if what she feared were truth. "I will go home," she said. "Please tell Ninitta." When she reached her rooms she found a letter, addressed in Dr. Ashton's hand, which the penny-post had left for her after she had gone out in the morning. It contained only an impression in wax which resembled a large seal. With hot eyes she bent over it, making nothing of its reversed letters. Then, with a sudden thought, she held it before the glass, seeing in the mirror the words, which read backwards, like the life of him whose last act had been their forming: "DEATH FOILS THE GODS." XXXI. HE SPEAKS THE MERE CONTRARY. Love's Labor's Lost; i.--1. "Edith," Arthur Fenton said, looking up from his paper at breakfast that morning, "Dr. Ashton is dead." "Dead!" she exclaimed. Her husband's indifferent tone shocked her. She was not without an unphrased feeling that death was so sacred or at least so solemn a subject that it should be treated with reverence. Any jesting upon it made her cringe, and the light mention of it seemed to her almost immoral. "So the paper says," replied he; and he read aloud the paragraph containing the announcement of Dr. Ashton's sudden death from heart disease. "It is too bad," he commented. "He was a mighty smart fellow and square as a brick. I wonder what made him do it now." "Made him do what?" she asked. "How strangely you talk. Made him die?" "Yes; that's what I meant. I knew he had a trouble which would probably make him do it sooner or later, but I'd no idea it would come so soon." "Arthur, what do you mean," Edith repeated, the tears coming into her eyes. "I don't like to hear you speak of death so--so--flippantly." "Flippantly, my dear?" returned he. "I'm sure I don't know why you should use that word. If a man takes his life, why shouldn't I speak of it,--to you, that is; of course I should not in public."