wretched and oppressed life. But as years instead of months went by, the sole influence no longer rested with the girl, drawing Roger Pierce upward, as she longed and strove to do, into her own sunshine. Their mutual relation had only lightened his darkness in part, while it had drawn over her the faint twilight of a Shadow like his own. But as the chief characteristic of this unearthly Thing was that it grew by notice, as some strange Eastern plants live on air, it throve but slowly near to Violet Channing, whose thoughts were bent on curing the heart-evil of Roger Pierce, and were so absorbed in that patient care that they had little chance to turn upon herself; though, when patience almost failed, and, weary with fruitless labor and unanswered yearning, her heart sunk, she was conscious of a vague influence that made the sunbeams fall coldly, and the songs of Summer mournful.
Hour after hour she lavished all the treasure she knew, and much that she knew not consciously, to beguile the darkness from Roger's brow; or recalled again and again her own deeds and words, to review them with strict judgment, lest they might have set provocation in his path; till at length her loving thoughts grew restless and painful, her face paled, her frame wasted away, and over her deep melancholy eyes the Shadow hung like a black tempest reflected in some clear lake.
Roger was not blind to this change; he did not see who had cast the first veil of darkness over the pure light that had shone so freely for him; and while he silently regretted what he deemed the desecration of the spotless image he had loved, nothing whispered that it was his own Shadow brooding above the true heart that had toiled so faithfully and long for his enlightening.
The most painful result of all to Violet was the new coldness of Roger's manner to her. Shadowed as he was, he did not perceive this change in himself; but Violet, in the silence of night, or in the solitary hours she spent in wood and field
beside her growing Shadow, felt it with unmingled pain. Vainly did the Spirit of Light within her counsel her to persevere, looking only at the end she would achieve; subtler and more penetrative to her untuned ear were the words of the fiend at her side.
One day she had brooded long and drearily on the carelessness and coldness of her dear, her disregardful friend, and in her worn and weary soul revolved whatever sweetness of the past had now fled, and what pangs of love repulsed and devotion scorned lay before her in the miserable future; and as she held her throbbing head upon her hands, wasted with fiery pulses, it seemed to her as if the Shadow, inclining to her ear, whispered, almost audibly,—
"Think what you have given this man! —your hope and peace; the breath of your life and the beatings of your heart. All your soul is lavished on him, and see how he repays you!"
The weak and disheartened girl shivered; the time was past when she could have despised the voice of this dread companion, when the Shadow dared not have spoken thus; and with bitter tears swelling into her eyes she and the Shadow walked forth together to a haunt on the mountain-side where she had been used to meet Roger.
It was a bare rock, just below the summit of a peak crowned with a few old cedars, from whose laborious growth of dull, dark foliage long streamers of gray moss waved in the wind. There were scattered crags about their roots, against whose lichen-covered sides the autumn sun shone fruitlessly; and from the leafless forests in the deep valley beneath rose a whispering sound, as if they shuddered, and were stirred by some foreboding horror.
Violet made her way to this height as eagerly as her lessened strength and panting heart allowed; but as she lifted her eyes from the narrow path she had tracked upward, they rested on the last face she wished to meet, the gloomy visage of Roger Pierce. The girl hesitated,
