Year: 1871

miss attention altogether, even from
the one to whom she is married,
than ever seem to ask for II.


Men viii not believe it, but many
a woman has died Of such a life as
Tilly led. The case was not so bad
with Tilly as it seemed, however,
Under all his abstraction and cold
ness and critical superiority lurked
a tenderness that Stephen would
have been ashamed to express. His
neglect arose from absorption in his
pursuits, rather than any repug-
nance to his wife's society. And he
did not provide her with amuse-
ment, because he thoroughly be-
lieved that woman could be satisfied
with sewing and fancy work; and
for this reason he gave her no prais-
es, not recognizing her toll as a la
Dor of love, but as an employment
as delightful to her As his profession
was to him. And the fact that he
never praised her beauty was due to
his theorizing also. Woman, the
weak, vain animal, must be strictly
guided, lest she should go astray;
and always lovers talk had disgust
ed rather than pleased him, and he
had vowed never to yield to any
weakness whatever. And so he
called her Mrs. Appleton, and she
dared not call him Stephen; and
when sometimes his long arms fain
would have encircled and drawn her
to his bosom, he refrained for shame
of folly, and she was too proud
and too deeply panied even to touch
his shoulder with her palm unasked.


One day he caught her reading
certain love poems, and took the
volume from her hand, pleasantly
enough, for he was seldom rude,
with all his coldness, and furled the
pages over.


"A man wrote this he said
Praises of woman's face! Yearn-
ings for her presencei Why, a man
should be all-suhicient for himself.
Love makes a man weak, contempt
ible-love that these poets set such
value on. I think you had best not
read this thing, child; it is fun of
folly"


Then he tossed the book upon
the table-the treasured volume
over which the girls eyes had gloat-
ed before sho ever met this husband
of hers, saying, would that some
man would feel thus to me! talk or
write SO to or for mer' believing
that there was a love-life before her
in the ecstatc future. He went up
into his study and laboratory,
where some strange metallic com
pound was filing the house with its
fumes, and where for days he had
been toiling for the purpose of com
pleting an invention of which he
had dreampt long, long while
something as dear to him as ever
the philosophers stone could have
been to any old aGchemist. Tilly
took the book from the table and
walked toward the bright fire with it.
She rant the pages, full of her own
girlish pencil-marks, from top to
bottom, and heaped them on the
red Goals.


"Rest there, rhymed lies that de-
luded mer' she said, fiercelv; '.there
is no such thing as love. You
Knocked me with the falsehood. I
believe it no longer. Burn, worth
less jingle, that mean nothing
Would that I had never been fooled
by your


And tongues of flame, yellow, red
and blue, licked about the paper,
and Missed and cracked over the
shriyelling Lantern cover. lilly
watched the work of destruction,
and had seen the flames die out,
and the red train of sparks which
children call ''people going to
church" travel over the crisp tinder
and drop OFF in with the big "par-
son" and "clerl' following after,
when a cry, that she never forgot,
smote her cara something indie
scribable rumbled and shook in the
house suddenly, full of dust and hot
metallic odor; and rushing by a
sort of instinct to her husbands
study, she found him lying among
the debris of his apparatus, q sense
less, motionless, disfigured thing,
that could neither speak to norlOok
at her. An explosion had taken
place, and the inventor was the
victim.


At the sight Of him lying there,
dead, as she feared-utterly undonc,
at least, as she doubted not-all
Tilly's love returned. She took the
disfgured face to her bosom, as she
had never dared to take it before.
She kisssd that from which any one
else would have shrunk with loath-
ing, and knew the poet had not lied,
but that love was the one real thing
in this mad dream of hfe-and that
once born, 1t died not.


Tell me what I can do for him, +"
she said, after those who had come
to her aid had done their best