STRUCK DOWN.
YES, Irene had looked for this—looked for it daily for now more than a year. Still it came upon her with a shock that sent a strange, wild shudder through all her being. A divorce! She was less prepared for it than she had ever been.
What was beyond? Ah! that touched a chord which gave a thrill of pain. What was beyond? A new alliance, of course. Legal disabilities removed, Hartley Emerson would take upon himself new marriage vows. Could she say, "Yea, and amen" to this? No, alas! no. There was a feeling of intense, irrepressible anguish away down in heart-regions that lay far beyond the lead-line of prior consciousness. What did it mean? She asked herself the question with a fainting spirit. Had she not known herself? Were old states of tenderness, which she had believed crushed out and dead along ago, hidden away in secret places of her heart, and kept there safe from harm?
No wonder she sat pale and still, crumpling nervously that fatal document which had startled her with a new revelation of herself. There was love in her heart still, and she knew it not. For a long time she sat like one in a dream.
"God help me!" she said at length, looking around her in a wild, bewildered manner. "What does all this mean?"
There came at this moment a gentle tap at her door. She knew whose soft hand had given the sound.
"Irene," exclaimed Rose Carman, as she took the hand of her friend and looked into her changed countenance, "what ails you?"
Irene turned her face partly away to get control of its expression.
"Sit down, Rose," she said, as soon as she could trust herself to speak.
They sat down together, Rose troubled and wondering. Irene then handed her friend the notice which she had received. Miss Carman read it, but made no remark for some time.