“There is crape on the door-knob,” he faltered.  “Where’s Belle?”

“Oh, oh, oh!” sobbed Mildred, “Papa, papa, have mercy on us.  Can’t you sustain and help us at such a time as this?”

“She is dead, then,” he whispered, and he sank into a chair as if struck down.

“Yes, she’s dead.  You were the first one she asked for when she came out of her fever.”

“Great God! my punishment is greater than I can bear,” he groaned.

“Oh, Martin,” pleaded his wife, “come to me,” and too weak to rise from her couch she held out her arms to him.

He looked at her with a remorse and agony in his expression that were indescribable.  “No, Nan,” he said, “I’m not fit for you to touch now.  I’m murdering you all,” and he went hastily to his room and locked the door.

They waited, scarcely breathing in their deep apprehension.

In a few moments he came out, and his face was rigid and desperate in its aspect.  In spite of his repelling gesture Mildred clasped him in her arms.  The embrace seemed to torture him.  “Let me go!” he cried, breaking away.  “I poison the very air I breathe.  You both are like angels of heaven and I—­O God!  But the end has come,” and he rushed out into the gathering darkness.  Mrs. Jocelyn tried to follow him, and fell prostrate with a despairing cry on the floor.

Mildred’s first impulse was to restore her mother, without seeking help, in the faint hope that her father would return, for she had learned what strange alternations of mood opium produces; but as the sense of his words grew clearer she was overpowered, and trembled so violently that she was compelled to call to her help a neighbor—­a plain, good-hearted woman who lived on the same floor.  When at last Mrs. Jocelyn revived she murmured piteously: 

“Oh, Millie, why didn’t you let me die?”

“Mamma,” pleaded the girl, “how can you even think of leaving me?”

“Millie, Millie darling, I fear I must.  My heart feels as if it were bleeding internally.  Millie”—­and she grasped her child’s shoulder convulsively, “Millie, look in his room for—­for—­his pistol.”

“Oh, mamma, mamma!”

“Look, look!” said her mother excitedly.  “I can’t bear the suspense.”

Thinking that her mother was a little hysterical, and that compliance would quiet her, Mildred went to the place where her father always kept his cavalry revolver—­the one memento left of his old heroic army life.  It was gone!

She almost sank to the floor in terror, nor did she dare return to her mother.

“Millie, Millie, quick!” came in a faint cry from the outer room.

The poor girl rushed forward and buried her face in her mother’s bosom, sobbing, “Mamma, oh mamma, live for my sake.”

“I knew it, I knew it,” said the stricken wife, with a long low cry.  “I saw it in his desperate face.  Oh, Martin, Martin, we will die together!”