have served for the heroine of an antique tragedy or one of Octave Feuillet's novels. The elements of her own ruin were in germ within her, and she has bruised and broken herself against external forces, which were only the incarnation of that self-will which must be mastered before it can become efficient in the mastery of others." There was a slight rhythmic ring in that bit of summing up which pleased Bertha as she read it over, and she let it stand without interrogating herself too closely as to its precise import. Such meaning as it had to her could probably be expressed less sententiously by saying that Mrs. Sherwood's confidences had left upon her the impression of a nature too audacious in its efforts to fashion its own course and assert its supremacy to circumstances.
As she now made hurried preparations to go over as soon as possible to the scene of the disaster, a presentiment that all was over for her friend grew on her and depressed her painfully. Yet the cynic who declared that most men find some savor of delight in the taking off of even their closest intimates might have found some justification for his saying in Bertha Allen's instinctive acquiescence in what struck her as the dramatic fitness of such an ending. The half-developed artistic sense in her, which had been the source of not a few of her own mistakes, had seen in it the natural crushing of a little unreasoning force by a greater one. Her resignation gave way, however, to a rush of delight, which she did not stop to analyze either then or afterward, when, on reaching the landing, the first sight which met her eyes was Mrs. Sherwood, pale and with her right arm in a sling, in the act of disembarking from the little steamer. She brought her back to the hotel, rejoiced over her as over a recovered treasure, nursed her with tenderness through an attack of nervous fever brought on by the shock, and then carried her off to a coast village, where the cooler breezes of the North fanned her into strength and vigor. And all this time she refrained from questioning her, though that some change, deeper than met the eye, had been wrought in her seemed evident.
Conscience, which "makes cowards of us all," sometimes produced that result on Bertha Allen in a way which had a different appearance at first sight. It now and then insisted on excesses of candor which verged on brutality. In one of these she took her friend into the secret of her thoughts during the brief interval when she believed her dead. She had carried out her paint-box "for one more try at the impossible," as she said, and the two were spending their morning in a coast meadow, beyond which lay the smooth and shining sea. By this time their friendship had reached a point which seemed to her to promise a solid and enduring amity, such as is perhaps rarer between women than men, or, at least, more seldom chronicled, and she bethought her that openness on this point was justly due. Whether or not she thought of it as a possible door by which her listener might also profit, her note-book gave no evidence.
"The fact is," she went on, after a pause, her brief confession having met no immediate response, "you seemed to me to have made such a mess of your life, driven yourself into a cul-de-sac where you had no room to turn round and seemed bent on breaking your head against the wall in front of you, that I found myself thinking of the earthquake as a sort of happy release which even you would not have been sorry for."
Mrs. Sherwood's eyes lighted up with the amused sparkle which seemed of late to have been quenched by a flood of sombre memories and bitter thoughts.
"It is particularly kind of you," she said, "to include 'even me' among the number who would not have been sorry. Ah! don't spoil that speech with explanations. I know precisely what you mean. To tell you the truth, I had been wishing, not ten minutes before the shock came, for a sudden and speedy ending."
"Then you were disappointed?"
"Don't believe it! This is the second
