On its rough surface a cross was cut, and underneath were the words: 

    “Yesterday This Day’s Madness did prepare,
     To-morrow’s Silence, Triumph or Despair.”

Below that I read with stupefaction,

     “Margaret Dillon and child,”

and the dates

“January, 1843”
“July 25, 1882.”

In spite of the doubts and fancies this put into my mind, I no sooner stood beside the spot where the earth had claimed her, than all my old interest in her returned.  I lingered about the place, full of romantic fancies, decorating her tomb with flowers, as I had once decorated her triumphs, absorbed in a dreamy adoration of her memory, and singing her praise in verse.

It was then that I learned the true story of her disappearance, guessed at that of her death, as I did at the identity of the young Dominican priest, who sometimes came to her grave, and who finally told me such of the facts as I know.  I can best tell the story by picturing two nights in the life of Margaret Dillon, the two following her last appearance on the stage.

The play had been “Much Ado.”

Never had she acted with finer humor, or greater gaiety.  Yet all the evening she had felt a strange sadness.

When it was all over, and friends had trooped round to the stage to praise her, and trooped away, laughing and happy, she felt a strange, sad, unused reluctance to see them go.

Then she sat down to her dressing table, hurriedly removed her make-up, and allowed herself to be stripped of her stage finery.  Her fine spirits seemed to strip off with her character.  She shivered occasionally with nervousness, or superstition, and she was strangely silent.

All day she had, for some inexplicable reason, been thinking of her girlhood, of what her life might have been if, at a critical moment, she had chosen a woman’s ordinary lot instead of work,—­or if, at a later day, she had yielded to, instead of resisted, a great temptation.  All day, as on many days lately, she had wondered if she regretted it, or if, the days of her great triumph having passed,—­as pass they must,—­she should regret it later if she did not yet.

It was probably because,—­early in the season as it was—­she was tired, and the October night oppressed her with the heat of Indian Summer.

Silently she had allowed herself to be undressed, and redressed in great haste.  But before she left the theatre she bade every one “good night” with more than her usual kindliness, not because she did not expect to see them all on Monday,—­it was a Saturday night,—­but because, in her inexplicably sad humour, she felt an irresistible desire to be at peace with the world, and a still deeper desire to feel herself beloved by those about her.

Then she entered her carriage and drove hurriedly home to the tiny apartment where she lived quite alone.

On the supper table lay a note.