said he. “She was the last woman in the world to whom death could have been necessary. It was too absurd! I have no patience with her.”

“Why so?” I inquired, smothering my horror at his cold comment, in my eager curiosity to discover some tangible truth as to his relation with Zenobia. “If any crisis could justify the sad wrong she offered to herself, it was surely that in which she stood. Everything had failed her; prosperity in the world’s sense, for her opulence was gone, — the heart’s prosperity, in love. And there was a secret burden on her, the nature of which is best known to you.

Young as she was, she had tried life fully, had no more to hope, and something, perhaps, to fear. Had Providence taken her away in its own holy hand, I