Page:Maud Howe - A Newport Aquarelle.djvu/129

 nothing of that tearing grief with which the women who have lived, loved, and suffered weep out the agony which seems like to rend body and soul apart. The burden of her life seemed too great for her to bear, and she wept for the emptiness of her lot, of her heart. A verse from a poem which had always seemed appropriate to herself ran through her mind:—

When she was dead, what so appropriate as this poem, "Sur une Morte," of De Musset's, could be read over her cold clay? Why should she not die now? How easy would it be to slip down from the great rock, and lose herself in the oblivion of the black pool, with the white foam dancing above her? "Who would care much?" she asked herself, and answered her own question with more tears. No one would really