He held out his hand, and his blue eyes lost their steely glitter, filled with a prayer for pardon.

She picked up the bouquet which had fallen from the window sill to the floor, and without hesitation put it into his fingers: 

“I think I understand all that words could ever explain.  My short stream of life is very near the great ocean of rest.  I have ceased to struggle, ceased to hope; and since the end is so close, I wish no active warfare even with those who wronged me most foully.  If you will spare me the sight of you, I will try to forget the added misery of the visits you have forced upon me, and perhaps some of the bitterness may die out.  Take the flowers to Miss Gordon; leave no trace to remind me of your persecution.  We bear chastisement because we must, but the sight of the rod renews the sting; so, henceforth, I hope to see you no more.  When we meet before our God, I may have a new heart, swept clean of earthly hate, but until then--until then—­”

He caught her fingers, crushed his lips against them, and walked from the room, leaving the bouquet a shattered mass of perfume in the middle of the floor.

CHAPTER XVI.

Standing before Leon Gerome’s tragic picture, and listening to the sepulchral echo that floats down the arcade of centuries.  “Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant,” nineteenth century womanhood frowns, and deplores the brutal depravity which alone explains the presence of that white-veiled vestal band, whose snowy arms are thrust in signal over the parapet of the bloody arena; yet fair daughters of the latest civilization show unblushing flower faces among the heaving mass of the “great unwashed” who crowd our court-rooms—­and listen to revolting details more repugnant to genuine modesty, than the mangled remains in the Colosseum.  The rosy thumbs of Roman vestals were potent ballots in the Eternal City, and possibly were thrown only in the scale of mercy; but having no voice in verdicts, to what conservative motive may be ascribed the presence of women at criminal trials?  Are the children of Culture, the heiresses of “all the ages”, really more refined than the proud old dames of the era of Spartacus?

Is the spectacle of mere physical torture, in gladiatorial combats, or in the bloody precincts of plaza de toros, as grossly demoralizing as the loathsome minutiae of heinous crimes upon which legal orators dilate; and which Argus reporters, with magnifying lenses at every eye, reproduce for countless newspapers, that serve as wings for transporting moral dynamite to hearthstones and nurseries all over our land?  Is there a distinction, without a difference, between police gazettes and the journalistic press?