une! say, 'Never mindt, I'll make him,' und so he did, und here it is," thrusting some small object into my hand. "Und if you laugh, fräulein, I tink I die, 'cause it is so mean und little."
Then stooping her head, she pressed a kiss on my bare shoulder and rushed headlong down the stairs, leaving me standing there in the dark with "it" in my hand. Poor Semantha! "it" lies here now, after all these years; but where are you, Semantha? Are you still dragging heavily through life, or have you reached that happy shore, where hearts are hungry never more, but filled with love divine?
"It" is a little bit of white marble, highly polished and perfectly carved to imitate a tiny Bible. A pretty toy it is to other eyes; but to mine it is infinitely pathetic, and goes well with another toy in my possession, a far older one, which cost a human life.
Well, from that Christmas-tide Semantha
was never quite herself again. For a time she was extravagantly gay, laughing at everything or nothing. Then she became curiously absent-minded. She would stop sometimes in the midst of what she might be doing, and stand stock-still, with fixed eyes, and thoughts evidently far enough away from her immediate surroundings. Sometimes she left unfinished the remark she might be making. Once I saw a big, hulking-looking fellow walking away from the theatre door with her. The night was bad, too, but I noticed that she carried her own bundle, while he slouched along with his hands in his pocket, and I felt hurt and offended for her.
And then one night Semantha was late, and we wondered greatly, since she usually came very early, the theatre being the one bright spot in life to her. We were quite dressed, and were saying how lucky it was there was no dance to-night, or it would be spoiled, when she came in. Her face was
dreadful; even the straightforward one exclaimed in a shocked tone, "You must be awful sick!"
But Semantha turned her hot, dry-looking eyes upon her and answered slowly and dully, "I'm not sick."
"Not sick, with that white face and those poor curdling hands?"
"I'm not sick, I'm going avay."