resolves there; but I knew I should startle
him, and that I had taught him to dread and to
hate my tears. Besides, the idle tale I had
heard forced itself on my recollection—my
pride bade me know if that were true or
false, before I humbled myself to one who
might no longer care for me.

"Are you not going to bed now?" my
husband asked, throwing himself into a chair
opposite me.

"Presently," I answered, and stole a look
at his face. I could read nothing there; his
eyes were fixed on the fire. How should I
begin?

" Harold! I have something to ask you!"
Something in my voice attracted his attention;
his eyes were on me immediately.

The struggle to keep calm and speak
quietly, made my voice sound strange and
hard, even to myself. Yet I tried to speak
gaily—to tell him what I had heard, as a
false thing I did not believe; knew I should
hear him contradict; repeated only for his
amusement, for the sake of hearing that
contradiction.

But when he had heard me, he turned back
to his fire—gazing, silently with a moody
brow.

I urged him to speak. I grew afraid.
Then he rose, and turned a stern face upon
me. I had never seen him look like that
before.

"Wife! " he began .... I cannot, even
now, write the words he said. They sounded
cruel, but were only truth. He did not
answer my charge against him—did not
notice it; he only reminded me of what I had
made his home. His words smote me, how
heavily. I threw myself down before him.
I clasped his knees. I laid my head upon
his feet.

"I cannot bear it to-night. Perhaps I have
been harsh. I cannot be patient longer," he
said. Gently but firmly he put me by, and
then he went away.

I lay where he left me for some minutes,
half-stunned. But I heard his voice, and the
noise of horses' hoofs ringing loud and clear
on the frost-bound road.

I was at the window, and had opened the
curtains and shutters just in time to see my
husband riding away. Whither?

I did not go to bed that night. I lay on
the ground by the window, where I had
thrown myself, not unconscious for a minute.
I remember what I thought about as I lay:
how I should destroy myself. But my energy
was deadened, my brain numb; and I did
not rise to seek the means.

I watched the stars, so bright in the bright-
blue heaven. I watched them blankly then;
now I can recal exactly how they looked, and
how they paled before the ghastly dawn.

Ours was always a late household. No
one was stirring yet, when there came a
heavy trampling of feet on the carriage-
drive before the house, and then a knocking
at the door. Every sound seemed muffled to
me, for I was half-dead with cold and pain.

I rose with difficulty, vaguely wondering,
and crept down-stairs. The knocking grew
louder, but my hands were almost useless,
and trembled long enough at the door.

Long enough! The door was open all too
soon.

Without, waited my husband, patiently—
ay, very patiently! He waited, but he made
no noise.

I know all that followed that dread sight.
I cannot write it. One picture you shall
have that will be vividly present to me ever.

Harold, my husband white, cold, blood-
stained laid upon a couch, lying there blind,
and deaf, and dumb. His wife as surely—so
I thought straightway—his murderess as if
she had stabbed him to the heart (God knows
she had!), stretched beside him, pushing
the defiled, dust-soiled, blood-stained hair
from his disfigured brow, and pressing there
her vain kisses; dyeing her livid cheek red,
laying it against his; putting her hot, livid
lips to his cold, rigid ones, and crying to him
wildly, ceaselessly, "Harold! husband!"

They took me away by force. No one
pitied me much. Then, I really went mad.
God was only too merciful to me I went
mad!

My husband, riding in reckless misery, he
knew not where, had been thrown, and
dragged along the ground, his dark hair
trailing in the dust.

I believe he had been driven out by resentment
at an unjust accusation, mingling with
despair at the thought that his last chance
of peace and quiet at home had fled, now
that jealousy had taken form and substance
in my mind. I do not believe his heart had
ever for a moment wandered from his home;
finding no rest on his wife's, it had learnt
to love his children with something more than
a father's tenderness. He had suffered. O!
how he had suffered!

TURKISH POEMS ON THE WAR

IN the East, singers and rhapsodists supply
the place of newspapers. There, on the
old classic ground of antiquity, we still may
witness the origin of some new Iliad, singing
the siege and fall of Sebastopol, which
promises to be a modern Troy. First the
rhapsodes, afterwards, perhaps, a Homer. Scarcely,
had the present war lasted a month, before
the rhapsodes in Turkey lifted their voices in
the streets and coffee-houses. There was,
moreover, the advantage of a printing
establishment, if the lungs of the declamators and
singers should fail. It is thus, that some war-
like Turkish poems on the Oriental question
have come over to us; fragments, perhap, of
a great future Iliad. These ballads enjoy a
very extensive circulation. They are being
sung and repeated, with the permission of
government, in Constantinople and many