“Do you remember where that box of cigars was put?” he said, turning to me as I paused.  That was to keep me longer; for they were on the shelf, half a yard from where he stood.

I got the cigar-box and put it on the table.

“Now you will want some matches, and this stand is almost empty.”  So I took it away with me to my room, and came back with it filled.

“Is there anything else that I can do?” I said, pausing as I put it on the table.

“No, Pauline.  I believe not.  Thank you.”

I think that moment Richard was nearer to happiness than he had ever been before.  Poor fellow!

I went down-stairs, feeling quite easy in mind, and sat down to my letter.  That threw me back into the past, for to Sister Madeline I poured out my heart.  An hour went by, and I had forgotten Richard and the library.  I was recalled to the present by hearing some books fall on the floor (the library was over the parlor); and by hearing Richard’s step heavily crossing the room.  I started up, pushed my letter into my portfolio, and wiped away my tears, quite frightened that Richard should see me crying.  To my surprise, he came hurriedly down the stairs, passed the parlor-door, opened the hall-door, and shutting it heavily after him, was gone, without a word to me.  This startled me for a moment, it was so unusual.  But my heart was not enough engaged to be wounded by the slight, and I very soon returned to my letter and my other thoughts.

When I went up to bed, I stopped in the library, and found the lamp still burning, the pens unused, a cigar, which had been lighted, but unsmoked, lying on the table.  A book was lying on the floor at the foot of the bookshelf, where I had left Richard standing.  I picked it up.  “This was the last book that Uncle Leonard ever read,” I said to myself, turning its pages over.  I remembered that he had it in his hand the last night of his life, when I bade him goodnight.  I was not in the room the next day, till he was brought home in a dying state.

Ann had put the books in order, and arranged them, after he went down-town in the morning.

I wondered whether Richard knew that that was the last book he had been reading, and I put it by, to tell him of it in the morning when he came.  But in the morning Richard did not come.  Unusual again; and I was for an hour or two surprised.  He always found some excuse for coming on his way down-town:  and it was very odd that he should not want to explain his sudden going away last night.  But, as before, my lack of love made the wound very slight, and in a little time I had forgotten all about it, and was only thinking that this was Friday—­and that Wednesday was coming very near.

CHAPTER XXIII.

A REVERSAL

     All this is to be sanctified,
       This rupture with the past;
     For thus we die before our deaths,
       And so die well at last.