Destiny, which is stronger than human love, or the soul’s fidelity, had overmastered self-sacrifice and the heart of a woman. This woman had opened her eyes upon the world again, only to find it all night, all strange; she was captive of a great darkness. As she broke through the hedge of lilacs by the Cure’s house, the crowd of awe-stricken people fell back, opening a path for her to the door. She moved as one unconscious of the troubled life and the vibrating world about her. The hand of the child admitted her to the chamber of death; the door closed, and she stood motionless. The Cure made as if to rise and go towards her, but Madame Chalice, sitting sorrowful and dismayed at the foot of the couch, by a motion of her hand stopped him. The girl paused a moment, listening. “Your Excellency,” she whispered. It was as if a soul leaned out of the casement of life, calling into the dark and the quiet which may not be comprehended by mortal man. “Monsieur--Valmond!” Her trembling hands were stretched out before her yearningly. The Cure moved. She turned towards the sound with a pitiful vagueness. “Valmond, O Valmond!” again she cried beseechingly, her clouded eyes straining into the silence. The cloak dropped from her shoulders, and the loose robe enveloping her fell away from a bosom that throbbed with the passion of a great despair. Nothing but silence. She moved to the wall like a little child feeling its way, ran her hand vaguely along it, and touched a crucifix. With a moan she pressed her lips to the nailed feet, and came on gropingly to the couch. She reached down towards it, but drew back as if in affright; for a dumb, desolating fear was upon her. But with that direful courage which is the last gift to the hopeless, she stooped down again, and her fingers touched Valmond’s cold hands. They ran up his breast, to his neck, to his face, and fondled it, as only life can fondle death, out of that pitiful hunger which never can be satisfied in this world; then they moved with an infinite tenderness to his eyes, now blind like hers, and lingered there in the kinship of eternal loss. A low, anguished cry broke from her: “Valmond--my love!” and she fell forward upon the breast of her lost Napoleon. When the people gathered again in the little church upon the hill, Valmond and his adventure had become almost a legend, so soon are men and events lost in the distance of death and ruin. The Cure preached, as he had always done, with a simple, practical solicitude; but towards the end of his brief sermon he paused, and, with a serious tenderness of voice, said: