and suddenly, without warning, a horrible fancy came to her that it would be a wild joy to clutch such a soft, white neck with fierce fingers and crush out all the life! She seemed impelled to reach out to catch and strangle that image in the glass; yet, too, she felt, in a strange double consciousness, as if some one behind her chair were preparing to seize her. Then with a thrill of agony she realized what she was thinking, and she cast around her a beseeching glance, vainly seeking help.

Yet surely that girl in the mirror was another creature than herself. Damaris extended her hand toward the figure with a mocking gesture, and laughed a little, in an absent-minded, absorbed fashion, when the white-robed stranger did the same. She dropped her hands into her lap, and, watching with a glance of horrible cunning from beneath her drooping lids the white, smooth neck of that other girl, she began with furtive haste to pull off her gloves. She would assure herself whether the fair throat were as soft as it appeared; and with motions cat-like and swift she cast the gloves to the floor and rose to steal upon the stranger.

Then it occurred to her that this must be some guest at her own wedding, and the hereditary instinct of hospitality asserted itself. She sank back into her chair, her hands falling passive in her lap. She felt confused and dizzy. Something seemed to be unutterably wrong, yet she knew not what it was. Why should this stranger be here, and why did she regard her so closely? She struggled with her wandering thoughts, striving painfully to understand how it chanced that she was not alone.

Watching intently, she saw with a shock of surprise and pity that this hapless girl in the mirror was twisting her fingers in the well-remembered gesture which in her mother had shown the coming on of madness. Damaris was seized with a great compassion of grief for the fair young creature whom such an awful doom had overtaken. The fate of this stranger had been swifter, Damaris reflected, than the feet of her bridegroom. Her bridegroom! The word touched the very core of her half-dazed intelligence. Like the swift thrust of a white-hot sword, with rending, searing agony, the truth came home to her.

She knew the image was herself.

The unspeakable anguish of ages of pain was concentrated into that moment. It was like the horror of one who hangs a measureless instant upon the dizzy brink of an abyss down which he knows himself dashing. That fatal gesture which she knew so well smote the hapless bride with a terror too great for words. All power failed her; she could not breathe; an intolerable pressure crushed her bosom. Great drops of suffering beaded her forehead, and she gasped with as absolute a sense of suffocation as if an ocean had suddenly rolled over her head.

She heard Wallace at the door, and with a mad impulse to flee she sprang to her feet just as Lincoln knocked. The sound seemed to come from some far distance, and was muffled and half-lost amid the confused murmur which filled her ears like the beat of rushing waters. Then once more for an instant her failing reason struggled to consciousness, as a drowning swimmer writhes a last time to the surface and gasps a breath only to give it up in futile bubbles

that mark the spot where he sank. With a supreme effort her vanquished will for a moment reasserted itself. She knew her lover was at the door, and she knew also that the feet of doom had been swifter than those of the bridegroom. She even asked herself in agonized frenzy if she might not have been saved had Sherlock reached her a moment sooner. And as she thought, she sprang forward and threw open the door.

"I am mad!" she shrieked, in a voice which pierced to every corner of the old mansion.

The housekeeper came running from the inner chamber, while Wallace shrank whining at his mistress's feet. Lincoln, white as death, caught Damaris in his arms, as if he would snatch her from the jaws of death itself if need be. She struggled in his embrace, a wild glare replacing the flickering light of intelligence in her eyes.

Then Hannah Stearns took her from him, drew her into the chamber, and closed the door.

HE president of the club, at this moment, called the assembly to order, and announced that Mr. Fenwick had kindly consented-"Readers always kindly consent," muttered Fenton aside to Mrs. Staggchase—to read "Bishop Blougram's Apology," to which they would now listen. There was a rustle of people settling back into their chairs; the reader brushed a lank black lock from his sallow brow, and with a tone of sepulchral earnestness began:

"No more wine? then we'll push back chairs, and talk.''

For something over an hour the monotonous voice of the reader went dully on. Fenton drew out his tablets and amused himself and Miss Dimmont by drawing caricatures of the company, ending with a sketch of a handsome old dowager who went so soundly to sleep that her jaw fell. Over this his companion laughed so heartily that Mrs. Staggchase leaned forward smilingly and took his tablets away from him; whereat he produced an envelope from his pocket and was about to begin another sketch, when suddenly, and apparently somewhat to the surprise of the reader, the poem came to an end. There was a joyful stir. The dowager awoke, and there was a perfunctory clapping of hands when Mr. Fenwick laid down his volume, and people were assured that there was no mistake about his being really quite through. A few murmurs of admiration were heard, and then there was an awful pause, while the president, as usual, waited in the never-fulfilled hope that the discussion would start itself without help on his part.

"How cleverly you do sketch," Miss Dimmont said, under her breath; "but it was horrid of you to make me laugh."

"You are grateful," Fenton returned, in the same tone. "You know I kept you from being bored to death."

VOL. X.-37

"I have a cousin, Miss Wainwright," pursued Miss Dimmont, "whose picture we want you to paint."

"If she is as good a subject as her cousin," Fenton answered, "I shall be delighted to do it."

The president had, meantime, got somewhat ponderously upon his feet, half a century of good living not having tended to increase his natural agility, and remarked that the company were, he was sure, extremely grateful to Mr. Fenwick for his very intelligent interpretation of the poem read.

"Did he interpret it?" Fenton whispered to Mrs. Staggchase. "Why wasn't I told?"

"Hush!" she answered, "I will never let you sit by me again if you do not behave better."

"Sitting isn't my metier, you know," he retorted.

The president went on to say that the lines of thought opened by the poem were so various and so wide that they could scarcely hope to explore them all in one evening, but that he was sure there must be many who had thoughts or questions they wished to express, and to start the discussion he would call upon a gentleman whom he had observed taking notes during the reading -Mr. Fenton.

"The old scaramouch!" Fenton muttered, under his breath. "I'll paint his portrait and send it to "Punch.”

Then with perfect coolness he got upon his feet and looked about the parlor.

"I am so seldom able to come to these meetings," he said, "that I am not at all familiar with your methods, and I certainly had no idea of saying anything; I was merely jotting down a few things to think over at home, and not making notes for a speech, as you would see if you examined the paper." At this point Miss Dimmont gave a cough which had a sound strangely like a laugh strangled at its birth.

"The poem is one so subtile," Fenton continued, unmoved; "it is so clever in its knowledge of human nature, that I always have to take a certain time after reading it to get myself out of the mood of merely admiring its technique, before I can think of it critically at all. Of course the bit about an artist whose religion is his art' touches me keenly, for I have long held to the heresy that art is the highest thing in the world, and, as a matter of fact, the only thing one can depend upon. The clever sophistry of Bishop Blougram shows well enough how one can juggle with theology; and, after all, theology is chiefly some one man's insistence that everybody else shall make the same mistakes that he does."

Fenton felt that he was not taking the right direction in his talk, and that in his anxiety to extricate himself from a slight awkwardness he was rapidly getting himself into a worse one. It was one of those odd whimsicalities which always came as a surprise when committed by a man who usually displayed so much mental dexterity, that now, instead of endeavoring to get upon the right track, he simply broke off abruptly and sat down.

His words had, however, the effect of calling out instantly a protest from the Rev. De Lancy Candish. Mr. Candish was the rector of the Church of

the Nativity, the exceedingly ritualistic organization with which Mrs. Fenton was connected. He was a tall and bony young man, with abundant auburn hair and freckles, the most ungainly feet and hands, and eyes of eager enthusiasm, which showed how the result of New England Puritanism had been to implant in his soul the true martyr spirit. Fenton was never weary of jeering at Mr. Candish's uncouthness, his jests serving as an outlet not only for the irritation physical ugliness always begot in him, but for his feeling of opposition to his wife's orthodoxy, in which he regarded the clergyman as upholding her. The rector's self-sacrificing devotion to truth, moreover, awakened in the artist a certain inner discomfort. To the keenly sensitive mind there is no rebuke more galling than the unconscious reproof of a character which holds steadfastly to ideals which it has basely forsaken. Arthur said to himself that he hated Candish for his ungainly person. "He is so out of drawing," he once told his wife, "that I always have a strong inclination to rub him out and make him over again." In that inmost chamber of his consciousness where he allowed himself the luxury of absolute frankness, however, the artist confessed that his animosity to the young rector had other

causes.

As Fenton sank into his seat, Mrs. Staggchase leaned over to quote from the poem"For Blougram, he believed, say, half he spoke.'

The artist turned upon her a glance of comprehension and amusement, but before he could reply, the rough, rather loud voice of Mr. Candish arrested his attention.

"If the poem teaches anything," Mr. Candish said, speaking according to his custom, somewhat too warmly, "it seems to me it is the sophistry of the sort of talk which puts art above religion. The thing that offends an honest man in Bishop Blougram is the fact that he looks at religion as if it were an art, and not a vital and eternal necessity, -a living truth that cannot be trifled with."

"Ah," Fenton's smooth and beautiful voice rejoined, "that is to confound art with the artificial, which is an obvious error. Art is a passion, an utter devotion to an ideal, an absolute lifting of man out of himself into that essential truth which is the only lasting bond by which mankind is united."

Fenton's coolness always had a confusing and irritating effect upon Mr. Candish, who was too thoroughly honest and earnest to quibble, and far from possessing the dexterity needed to fence with the artist. He began confusedly to speak, but with the first word became aware that Mrs. Fenton had come to the rescue. Edith never saw a contest between her husband and the clergyman without interfering if she could, and now she instinctively spoke, without stopping to consider where she was.

"It is precisely for that reason," she said, "that art seems to me to fall below religion. Art can make man contented with life only by keeping his attention fixed upon an ideal, while religion reconciles us to life as it really is."

A murmur of assent showed Arthur how much against the feeling of those around him were the views he was advancing.