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 often thought she could hear her blood beating in her temples.

At times she recalled how it all was a month, two weeks before,—and she was frightened, for it appeared to her to have happened long, long ago, two or three years ago. She was a stranger to herself, as if some one had withdrawn from under her feet the soil on which she had been standing firmly heretofore, as if, after a dizzy flight, she had fallen into some strange, unknown place.

She felt a constant sadness. Within her all was black,—in her childhood she had seen thus the church on Good-Friday,—some one had died. Ah, and her merriment? She would never laugh again And as a complement to these pictures appeared to her the head of a man, with thin hair, dark eyes, and impassioned, fervid speech, who said to her:

“You are wretched, you are miserable in this life! How can you breathe here? Do