Never before in all the troubled past did the poor girl so need his sustaining love as on the night he left her. Mr. Wentworth spent an hour with the sad mother and daughter after the others had gone, and then sorrowfully departed, saying that he had an engagement out of town, and that he would come again immediately on his return. Mrs. Wheaton had gone home, promising that she would come back in the evening and spend the night with them, for she had a neighbor who would take care of the children, and so at last the two stricken women were left alone. Mildred was bathing her mother's head and trying to comfort her when the door opened, and a haggard, unkempt man stood before them. For a second they looked at him in vague terror, for he stood in a deep shadow, and then Mrs. Jocelyn cried, "Martin! Martin!" and tears came to her relief at last. He approached slowly and tremblingly. Mildred was about to throw herself into his arms, but he pushed her away. His manner began to fill them with a vague, horrible dread, for he acted like a spectre of a man. "Where are the children?" he asked hoarsely. "We have sent them to the country. Oh, papa, do be kind and natural--you will kill mamma." "There is crape on the door-knob," he faltered. "Where's Belle?" "Oh, oh, oh!" sobbed Mildred, "Papa, papa, have mercy on us. Can't you sustain and help us at such a time as this?" "She is dead, then," he whispered, and he sank into a chair as if struck down. "Yes, she's dead. You were the first one she asked for when she came out of her fever." "Great God! my punishment is greater than I can bear," he groaned. "Oh, Martin," pleaded his wife, "come to me," and too weak to rise from her couch she held out her arms to him. He looked at her with a remorse and agony in his expression that were indescribable. "No, Nan," he said, "I'm not fit for you to touch now. I'm murdering you all," and he went hastily to his room and locked the door. They waited, scarcely breathing in their deep apprehension. In a few moments he came out, and his face was rigid and desperate in its aspect. In spite of his repelling gesture Mildred clasped him in her arms. The embrace seemed to torture him. "Let me go!" he cried, breaking away. "I poison the very air I breathe. You both are like angels of heaven and I--O God! But the end has come," and he rushed out into the gathering darkness. Mrs. Jocelyn tried to follow him, and fell prostrate with a despairing cry on the floor. Mildred's first impulse was to restore her mother, without seeking help, in the faint hope that her father would return, for she had learned what strange alternations of mood opium produces; but as the sense of his words grew clearer she was overpowered, and trembled so violently that she was compelled to call to her help a neighbor--a plain, good-hearted woman who lived on the same floor. When at last Mrs. Jocelyn revived she murmured piteously: "Oh, Millie, why didn't you let me die?"