itself through the otherwise pitchy darkness.

"Be careful, miss; you may fall into the vat yourself!" exclaimed
more than one voice behind her.

But she hurried on, her slight form showing like a spectre against
the dim gleam towards which she bent her way, till suddenly she
paused and we saw her standing with clasped hands, and bent head,
looking down into what? We could readily conjecture.

"She will throw herself in," whispered a voice; but as, profoundly
startled, I was about to hasten forward, she hurriedly turned and
came towards us.

"I have seen it," she quietly said, and glided by us, and up the
stairs, and out of the mill to where that still form lay in its
ghostly quietude upon the sodden grass.

For a moment she merely looked at it, then she knelt, and, oblivious
to the eyes bent pityingly upon her, kissed the brow and then the
cheeks, saying something which I could not hear, but which lent a
look of strange peace to her features, that were almost as pallid
and set now as his. Then she arose, and holding out her hand to me,
was turning away, when a word uttered by some one, I could not tell
whom, stopped her, and froze her, as it were, to the spot.

That word was _suicide!_

I think I see her yet, the pale-green twilight on her forehead, her
lips parted, and her eyes fixed in an incredulous stare.