The Blue Wall

pper hall beside the window, through which the arc lights from the street threw jumping white patches on the cei

ed her face for a m

"I want you to stay.-Call Margaret and do

m in the grip of her strong fingers an

sensed the presence of some crisis and prowled about in her soft-footed way until she had discovered the truth. She was lying at the bottom of the stairs, her face bur

garet," sa

directing, arranging and doing with me all those necessary things. In spite of her labors she seemed always to be at my elbow, a ceaseless little whimpering in her throat. Her spectacles

a mental inventory is taken to be sure that all is done, I was surprised to see her expression change suddenly,

er thick fingers pulling open drawer after drawer of

h, my God! Mr. Estabrook, I sa

d, with a glim

tn't ever have 'em! I'd rather they should pluck

contagious fear. "He died with them on the floor

, reaching under the old easy-chair and the desk, patting over the rug with her hand, turning up its

hild, she must never see. It is worse than death-a hundre

object held up to my astonished eyes between her forefinger and thumb, she uttered a cry of despair and rag

you see that? The girl has read it. She w

keeping back

I cried. "What w

she meant to show me that I nee

, Mr. Estabro

ch had entangled me, and overcome by any means the silence of this woman. She had arisen. She was within my reach. And I believe that I put my hands upon her, catching her two round and fles

now this horrible, hidden t

r, distrust. I saw in her eyes the beginning of that hate which

e said calmly. "You would not act so if the old

ou may believ

orry,"

above as if to indicate to me that nothing was important but the fa

face with her fat hands, as if to hide some terrible pictur

rest away from the true and noble woman who had promised to be my wife, all the terrible grief which, alone in the chamber above, she must have been suffering. For the first time, I think, in all my life, which, by training and inherited instincts, had been devoted, I might say, to the welfare of the Estabrook name and of myself, I felt my mind-and even my

said aloud in that silent ro

garden were lit by the pale rays of the morning moon, that the stars shone clearly again through the still air, and that the odor of flowers, nodding below the w

had gone, I almost believed that he had come back as he used to do when he, in his absent-minded way, had left

window panes now appeared luminous with the first gray flow of the east. It seemed to me that the time had come when Julianna should no longer be alone with her own thoughts; with soft steps I climbed the stairs and softly

lk, which, if she had been standing, would have fallen from the points of her shoulders in voluminous folds to the

longer could be relied upon to retain its contents, her fingers moved this way and that through the hair above her ears, and, in strange contrast with the glimmer of early day beyond the white curtains, an uncanny flickering

" I exclai

the hearth with a soft rustle before they fell into heaps of sooty fragments. Whatever the Judge had written with infinite pain had now been destroyed. And as I looked into her eyes, I saw, too, that infinite pain had attended their destruction. Her ex

y Julie!"

er own, and then fell forward, flat upon the floor, unconscious. If in that moment she appeared a groveling thing, it was only for a moment. Before I could stoop to

eating. "It is unthinkabl

a, tell me! What has happene

nswered. "I

ho say these things,"

s his message. And what he has be

d towa

g that threatens us-that works its evil upon us.

eturn of her wonderful self-control. "But no one s

e that message," I sa

y issued from her

willing no

es

aking her eyes away from mine, sh

ou? Oh, go, while I am strong! Go, while I know that you must n

horrors would not have daunted me then. "Will you tre

if cold steel had been

ove of me,-by your love of God,-never to ask me of those things now ash

?-I promis

true and ever-loving wife as God will let me be," she said sof

uched her she fell back, with her limp body in the curve of my elbow, and, lo