for thee and me—­apart or together I care not, so I cease.  Thou needst not love me any more; I care not for thy love.  I hardly care for the blessed darkness itself.  Give me no sweet oblivious antidote, no precious poison such as I once prayed for when I feared the loss of love, that it might open to me the gate of forgetfulness, take me softly in unseen arms, and sink with me into the during dark.  No; I will, not calmly, but in utter indifference, await the end.  I do not love thee; but I can eat, and I enjoy my wine, and my rubber of whist—­’”

She broke into a dreadful laugh.  It was all horribly unnatural!  She rose, and in the deepening twilight seemed to draw herself up far beyond her height, then turned, and looked out on the shadowy last of the sunset.  Faber rose also.  He felt her shudder, though she was not within two arm’s-lengths of him.  He sprang to her side.

“Miss Meredith—­Juliet—­you have suffered!  The world has been too hard for you!  Let me do all I can to make up for it!  I too know what suffering is, and my heart is bleeding for you!”

“What! are you not part of the world?  Are you not her last-born—­the perfection of her heartlessness?—­and will you act the farce of consolation?  Is it the last stroke of the eternal mockery?”

“Juliet,” he said, and once more took her hand, “I love you.”

“As a man may!” she rejoined with scorn, and pulled her hand from his grasp.  “No! such love as you can give, is too poor even for me.  Love you I will not.  If you speak to me so again, you will drive me away.  Talk to me as you will of your void idol.  Tell me of the darkness of his dwelling, and the sanctuary it affords to poor, tormented, specter-hunted humanity; but do not talk to me of love also, for where your idol is, love can not be.”

Faber made a gentle apology, and withdrew—­abashed and hurt—­vexed with himself, and annoyed with his failure.

The moment he was gone, she cast herself on the sofa with a choked scream, and sobbed, and ground her teeth, but shed no tear.  Life had long been poor, arid, vague; now there was not left even the luxury of grief!  Where all was loss, no loss was worth a tear.

“It were good for me that I had never been born!” she cried.

But the doctor came again and again, and looked devotion, though he never spoke of love.  He avoided also for a time any further pressing of his opinions—­talked of poetry, of science, of nature—­all he said tinged with the same sad glow.  Then by degrees direct denial came up again, and Juliet scarcely attempted opposition.  Gradually she got quite used to his doctrine, and as she got used to it, it seemed less dreadful, and rather less sad.  What wickedness could there be in denying a God whom the very works attributed to him declared not to exist!  Mr. Faber was a man of science, and knew it.  She could see for herself that it must draw closer the bonds