I heard from Leona just twice during the long time which elapsed between her leaving home and the day when Miss Belle decided to join her. Once, Belle read me some extracts from one of Leona's letters; once, Leona herself, needing some simple medical advice, wrote to me. When Belle told me she was going to see Leona, I suddenly resolved I would go too. I don't know why, for I certainly don't believe in presentiments. But I had learned to distrust Belle, who FASHION DOLL, EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. seemed still no more than a spoiled child, and who appeared to have an inexplicable dislike for Leona, though she liked to have her live with her, and readily bowed to her will in most things. I went down to the little place by the sea. I made such arrangements as would make it possible for me to be absent an indefinite time, though I did it at some pecuniary sacrifice. I did not go with Belle. I did not mention my intention of going. I think she was astonished when she found me on the same train with herself. She asked no questions, however, for which I was inclined to be thankful; she only quietly monopolized my time and attentions all the way-a habit of hers with any man and under any circumstances. I got rid of Belle soon after our arrival at the hotel, and was fortunate enough to find an old acquaintance or two from whom I learned quite a number of things of interest. Leona's past history was 1. Making the Model. 2 Joining the Head. 3. Setting the Eyes. 4. Waxing the Head. 5. Painting the Face. b. Dressing the Hair. 7. Fixing the Head 8. Dressing the Finished Doll. MAKING WAX DOLLS. SEE PAGE 363. where with her; he was scarcely less than her shadow. They were away among the hills then; it was expected they would have had supper before they returned, stopping for that purpose at a quaint little inn, famous for the variety of game served there, in its season. questions, as well as myself. I concluded that she had worked herself up into a fine rage over it all. I saw Leona and her friend return. The latter, to my surprise, was my old friend Dudley Wynway. I felt a pang at my heart, less because I believed he had wor her than because I knew he was unworthy of her. I had an added pang soon, the reason being that she did not appear to notice me at all. I do Belle and Leona had some little conversation. not know what was said; I think I don't care; it was certainly no one's business but their own. I introduced Wynway to Belle. I had the satisfaction of seeing them walk away together. I felt sure that they were disposed of for some hours, for I knew Belle very well, and had not forgotten Wynway. I sat down. I tried to be patient. I waited. I watched for Leona. She came out upon the piazza at last. I rose up and went toward her. She met me with the frankly outstretched hand of a lifelong friendship. She said what would have sounded natural from a man's lips, but quite the opposite from the lips of any woman under the skyexcept queenly Leona Dunerath-as we took seats in a quiet corner. "Congratulate me! I have found the one man in all the world," was what she said. She told me much, though I asked her few questions. I was her true friend, that was all; she was as frank with me as she would have been with a brother, or with Mr. Raymond. I forgave her, as she told me of her newfound happiness; I suppose she forgot that I was young -that I had eyes to see with-and a heart-and warm blood. It was a genuine relief when Wynway and Belle returned. I did not sleep any that night. Tears may be unmanly; I suppose they are. But my pillow was not dry in the morning. Let me do myself the justice of saying, however, that my regret was less for what I had lost than the misery I felt would be hers at the hands of such a man as my old friend, the fickle, unstable, wavering and changing Dudley Wynway. I left for home early the next morning. In two days I had a brief letter from Leona, saying: "Forget what I told you, my dear friend, for he has failed me, after all. I shall never speak to him again, and I cannot bear the loneliness of my life just yet, with the eyes of friends looking on. I am going abroad." She went. I had a letter from her once a month, for a year. She told me of her journeyings, her amusements, her pleasures. She said no word of Dudley Wynway in those twelve letters, those precious letters which I keep sacredly to this day. I said no word regarding him in the letters which went from me to her, across the sea. Then, at the end of that year-her year of mourning for her dead love, as I sometimes said to myself, I went across the ocean myself. I had prospered so much that I could afford it as a pleasure trip. But it was no pleasure trip, in its ordinary sense, which I undertook. I told others that I had some desire for further study, and that I wished the advantages of experience in the hospitals of the Old World. This was true enough, but I told myself a very different kind of truth; I was going to Europe because Leona Dunerath was there; I was going to study, to be sure, but the object of my going was that I might be near her-that I might sometimes see her that I might look into her eyes and hear her voice. I was following Leona; following her as I had followed her, in thought, at least, from early boyhood; following her as I would follow her all her life—or until I, or some luckier man, won her. I need write little of my European trip. I studied much. I learned many things which will help me to save life when it is possible, and more which will aid in making death easier when it is inevitable. I saw Leona frequently. I journeyed with her, sometimes, on little excursions which she took. When she decided to return to America I finished up my medical studies abroad. We returned to New York on the same steamer. I had been away almost four years. It was nearly five years since she had written me of Wynway's falsity to her. I went to see her at her old home, the Raymond house, soon after our return. My feelings overcame me. I could wait no longer. I took her hand in mine. I told her the truth in the simplest way. I asked my question in a manner no less simple. "Leona, I love you! Will you be my wife?" She gently drew her hand from mine. She rose up from where she sat. She walked away to the window. "I-I had never thought of that," she said; "you must let me think." I let her think. God help me, I could do no less; nor could I do more. I loved her so-I loved her so; and still I must stand by idly, and in silence, and let her face a thought which had never touched her brain before; I must let her feel her heart beat under the load of an emotion of which she had never dreamt. She came back across the room to me at last. She did not put out her hand. She did not offer me her lips to kiss. She did not even smile. But there was that in her face which I had never seen there before-a look as solemn as she will wear when death comes to take me from her, if I go first, but a look in which there was hope and promise. He will be happy who sees such a look of promise and approval upon the face of God when the hills totter and the skies blaze on the morning of the great last day! "You-you remember Maggie Dalartre, do you?" she asked. "I do. I have never doubted your entire innocence.” "Thank you. Do you remember Dudley Wynway?" "Yes." "And that I was engaged to him?" "I do." "And you are content to take me as I am ?" "Content? I shall be more than blessed, more than supremely happy, and——” And a new expression came into her face, an expression which has been my sunshine and my heaven ever since. I had my arms about her in a moment; I was kissing her lips, her cheeks, her brow; and through it all she was talking to me, or trying to, as though there was not a universal language in which some of the unforgotten joys of paradise still find expression, which was old and well established before English was ever thought of. "Do you think one may feel a certain emotion, and never recognize it until she is asked about it ?" "I hope so," I replied. "I-I do love you," she said, and I had no wish to inquire how closely or remotely that fact might be connected with the question she had asked. "I am very happy in knowing it," I said. "And-and-I guess I've loved you all my life, if I had only had the sense to know it." Which was so manifestly an illustration of a poor memory and poorer logic, that I made no reply. It spoke well for the present, though, and promised excellently for the future; I was content; I did not dispute it; I think Leona believed it when she said it; I think she believes it yet. We were married very quietly. We did not invite in our friends. We did not even wait for Belle, who was somewhere in Canada, and camping out for a few weeks, | denial nor regret shone there. She held up her dainty I believe. We went on a short bridal trip, a couple of weeks or so, and then returned home. We had sent word to Belle. She came home in haste to see us. I shall never forget the day she came, nor the way she came. My wife was sitting in a deep window, sewing; I was at my desk, engaged in writing. Belle had never been in our house before, of course, but her unceremonious habits were not to be broken down by any such a fact as that. She did not ring the bell. She took no measures to announce herself. She simply came in at the open front door, and came running up the stairs. She came in at the door. My wife, in the window, be'hind the heavy curtain, was unseen. I looked up as she paused on the threshold. And I shuddered. And I felt the blood leave my face. I grew sick and faint. little hands, as though courting admiration. "How did you know? Did Leona tell you? Yes, I did it with my own hands! Ha! ha! ha!" Mad? Certainly. And As mad as ever a human being was in the world. I knew it the moment I saw her, after my eyes had been educated in the great German schools so that I could see aright. Mad? She had been mad all her life. Belle Raymond is in an insane asylum. She will die there. She never manifested homicidal mania but once, and it might be she never would again. But I love my wife too well, and respect humanity too much, to care to take any risks. So she will remain there; not so much for what she has done, but for what she might do. And if I am kindly toward her, it is no more than humane. Her warped intellect was not her fault; it was her misfortune. And-had she not done what she did, Leona Dunerath would have been Dudley Wynway's wife, I suppose, instead of mine. 63,465 NOCTURNE. She had not changed. She did not seem a day older than when I last saw her, four years before. She was still the childish, helpless, clinging creature she had been; there was in her face the possibility of sullen malice which had always been there; she was no more than the Belle Raymond I had always known; she was no less. The change was all in me; I knew more than STILL, still is the Night; still as the pause after pain; I had known four years before; I had not wasted my four years in Europe. She came straight up to the desk where I sat. She looked into my eyes, out of those big blue ones of hers. She clasped her hands in a prettily pleading way. "Is it true you've married into our family?" she asked. "Leona is my wife," I replied. Then you ought to know all our secrets, I suppose ?” "Certainly." "Do you remember Maggie Dalartre ?" "There was a tramp called that afternoon," insisted Leona. "I know it. I saw him myself. But he didn't kill Maggie." 66 'No," said I, and I tried to keep my voice steady, "the tramp did not kill Maggie. Will you tell me who did kill her ?" "Leona knows," said she. "Indeed ?" BY A. MARY F. ROBINSON. Still and as dear; Deep, solemn, immense! vailing the stars in the clear Who, truly, shall say thou art sullen or dark or unseen, Clear o'er the valley of olives asleep in the quivering light, Nay, not as the Day, thou art light, O Night, with a beam Never the moon was blue as these tremulous heavens of thine, Night, clea. with the moon, filled with the dreamy fire That from the lamp in his luminous breast, the fire-fly throws; DOLLS AND DOLLMAKERS. DOLLS are idols, and, as the name comes from the ancient Greeks, the article is even older, and dates back to the early times of the human race. The tombs of Peru and of Egypt, of Scandinavia and of the primitive Christ 66 'Yes. She saw it done, just too late to prevent it." ians in the Catacombs, all combine to show that the "Indeed ?" "Yes. And she's kept it a secret all these years, and has suffered everything, because she loves the one who did it." "Indeed ?" "Yes, indeed. Now guess who did it." "Belle Raymond, it was you!" little girls had their dolls, and loved them so dearly that their parents, grieving over their darling's early death, would not remove from its side the toy which had been a source of so much pleasure in its brief earthly existence. But, after all, the doll is more to a little girl than a toy. A child's affection seldom centres on a toy, and the destructive hand sweeps the toys down ruthlessly, whether The wonder in her eyes deepened a little, but neither the owner be boy or girl; but to the girl, her doll is a |