call it a trifle, or would he be ready to kill her? True, he had no
right, he _could_ have no right to know; but how horrible that there
should be any thought of right between them! still worse, any thing
whatever between them that he had no right to know! worst of all, that
she did not belong to him so utterly that he must have a right to know
_every_ thing about her! She _would_ tell him all! She would! she would!
she had no choice! she must!--But she need not tell him now. She was not
strong enough to utter the necessary words. But that made the thing very
dreadful! If she could not speak the words, how bad it must really
be!--Impossible to tell her Paul! That was pure absurdity.--Ah, but she
_could_ not! She would be certain to faint--or fall dead at his feet.
That would be well!--Yes! that would do! She would take a wine-glass
full of laudanum just before she told him; then, if he was kind, she
would confess the opium, and he could save her if he pleased; if he was
hard, she would say nothing, and die at his feet. She had hoped to die
in his arms--all that was left of eternity. But her life was his, he had
saved it with his own--oh horror! that it should have been to disgrace
him!--and it should not last a moment longer than it was a pleasure to
him.

Worn out with thought and agony, she often fell asleep--only to start
awake in fresh misery, and go over and over the same torturing round.
Long before her husband appeared, she was in a burning fever. When he
came, he put her at once to bed, and tended her with a solicitude as
anxious as it was gentle. He soothed her to sleep, and then went and had
some dinner.

On his return, finding, as he had expected, that she still slept, he sat
down by her bedside, and watched. Her slumber was broken with now and
then a deep sigh, now and then a moan. Alas, that we should do the