him again and ho stood up holding by the mantel shelf as he pressed his cold hair down with a hand that shook as if it were i she was coming to him but he stretched out his arm to stop her no i don t please don t i let me see thee by the bed let me see thee a so good and so let me see thee as i see thee when i in i can never see thee better than so never never never he had a violent fit of trembling and then sunk into his chair a time he controlled himself and resting with an on one knee and his head upon that hand could look toward seen across the dim candle with his eyes she looked as if she had a glory shining round her head he could have she had he did it as the noise without shook the window rattled at the door below and went a o x i hard time when she gets better tis to be hoped she ll leave thee to again and do thee no more hurt any ways we will hope so now and now i shall keep silence for i want thee to sleep he closed his eyes more to please her than to rest his weary head but by slow degrees as he listened to the great noise of the wind he ceased to hear it or it changed into the working of his loom or even into the voices of the day his own included saying what had been really said even this imperfect consciousness faded away at last and he a long troubled dream he thought that he and some one on whom his heart had long been set � but she was not and that surprised him even in the midst of his imaginary happiness � stood in the church being married while the ceremony was performing and while he recognized among the witnesses some whom he knew to be living and many whom he knew to be dead darkness came on succeeded by the shining of a tremendous light it broke from one line in the table of at the altar and illuminated the building with the words they were sounded through the church too as if there were voices in the fiery letters upon this the whole appearance before him and around him changed and nothing was left as it had been but himself and the clergyman they stood in the daylight before a crowd so vast that if all the people in the world could have been brought together into one space they could not have looked he thought more numerous and they all him and there was not one pitying or friendly eye among the millions that were fastened on his face he stood on a raised stage under his own loom and looking up at the shape the loom took and hearing the burial service distinctly read he knew that he was there to death in an instant what he stood on fell below him and he was gone out of what mystery he came back to his usual life and to places that he knew he was unable to consider but ho was back in those places by some means and with this condemnation upon him that he was never in this world or the next through all the ages of eternity to look on face or hear her voice wandering to and fro � sa s of be knew not what he only aa a hard times seek it he was the subject of a nameless horrible dread a mortal fear of one particular shape which every thing took whatsoever he looked at grew into that form sooner or later the object of his miserable existence was to prevent its by any one among the various people he encountered hopeless labor if he led them out of rooms where it was if he shut up and where it stood if he drew the curious from places where he knew it to be and got them out into the streets the chimneys of the mills assumed that shape and round them was the printed word the wind was blowing again the rain was beating on the and the larger spaces through which he had strayed contracted to the four walls of his room saving that the fire had died out it was as his eyes had closed upon it seemed to have fallen into a in the chair by the bed she sat wrapped in her shawl perfectly still the table stood in the same place by the bedside and on it in its real proportions and appearance was the shape so repeated he thought he saw the curtain move ho looked again and he was sure it moved he saw a hand come forth a about a httle then the curtain moved more and the woman in the bed put it back and sat up with her eyes so haggard and wild so heavy and large she looked all round the room and passed the comer where he slept in his chair her eyes returned to that comer and she put her hand over them as a shade while she looked into it again they went all round the room scarcely if at all and returned to that comer he thought as she once more shaded them � not so much looking at him as looking for him with a instinct that he was there � that no single trace was left in those features or in the mind that went along with them of the woman he had married eighteen years before but that he had seen her come to this by inches he never could have believed her to be the same all this time as if a spell were on him he was motionless and powerless except to watch her or 