"Heaven give me strength to destroy it!" he cried. "I dare not trust myself to keep it. It will drive me mad!"
[CHAPTER XLIII.]
The flames touched the portrait, and with a cry Eugene Mallard hastily drew it back.
"No, no—a thousand times no!" It would be as easy to burn the living, beating heart in his bosom.
While he had the strength, he hurried to his writing-desk, placed it in a pigeon-hole, shut down the lid, and turned the key. Then he buried his face in his hands.
He ruminated upon the strangeness of the position he was placed in. Both of these young girls loved him, while he loved but one of them, and the one whom he loved so deeply could never be anything in this world to him. He wondered in what way he had offended Heaven that such a fate should be meted out to him.
At that moment quite a thrilling scene was transpiring at the railway station of the little Virginia town.
The New York Express, which had just steamed in, stood before it, and from one of the drawing-room cars there stepped a handsome man dressed in the height of fashion.