No shock of horror chilled me; no remembrance of
a voluntary assent to the Tempter could I recall. I was there, it was
true; but was I guilty? Did I, in the eyes of any watching angel,
consciously cast my life, brittle and blind as it was, away in that
fashion? In the water, helpless now for any effort after upper air,
side by side with the fleshless anatomy of a brute, over-sailed by gray
fishes with speckled sides, whose broad, unwinking eyes glared at me
with maddening shine and stare,--oppressed, and almost struggling, yet
all unable to achieve the struggle with the curdling blood that gorged
every vein and air-cell with the hurried rush of death,--did I go out of
this life red with the sin of murder? Did I commit suicide?
Who knows?
* * * * *
THE MINISTER'S WOOING.
[Continued.]
CHAPTER VI.
THE DOCTOR.
It is seldom that man and woman come together in intimate association,
unless influences are at work more subtile and mysterious than the
subjects of them dream. Even in cases where the strongest ruling force
of the two sexes seems out of the question, there is still something
peculiar and insidious in their relationship. A fatherly old gentleman,
who undertakes the care of a sprightly young girl, finds, to his
astonishment, that little Miss spins all sorts of cobwebs round him.
Grave professors and teachers cannot give lessons to their female pupils
just as they give them to the coarser sex, and more than once has the
fable of "Cadenus and Vanessa" been acted over by the most unlikely
performers.
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