There the door swung to.
An hour from that Mr. Sylvester left the house with a small valise in his hand, and Mrs. Sylvester dressed in her showiest costume, entered her carriage for an early shopping excursion.
And so when Paula whispered to herself, “I did not dare to tell him; I did not dare to tell anyone, but—” she thought of those terrible words, “Die? It might be better, perhaps, that you should!” and then remembered the ghastly look of immeasurable horror with which a few hours later, he staggered away from that awful burden, whose rigid lines would never again melt into mocking curves, and to whom the morning’s wide soaring hopes, high reaching ambitions and boundless luxuries were now no more than the shadows of a vanished world; life, love, longing, with all their demands, having dwindled to a noisome rest between four close planks, with darkness for its present portion and beyond—what?