, given her by cordial 
and opium, had died away. She lay still, her 
breathing short and weak, her brow contracted, 
her limbs exhausted and powerless, the hand of 
death heavy upon her ; her lips apart, her cheeks 
gray and hollow, her brain confused, and weighed 
down with the cloudy thoughts, and memories, 
and wordnetfear, which haunted her last hours. 

And Sabretasche stood beside her, musing on 
the strange accident which had led him to the 
death-bed of the woman who had made all the 
 of his life ; of that cruel and inexorable tie 
which had bound him for so long ; of the deep, 
unsolved problem of human nature ; that book 
written in such different language for every reader, 
that it is little marvel that every man thinks his 
own the universal tongue, and fails even to spell 
out his brother's translation of it. This woman 
had hated him ; he had loathed her ; they had 



198 "held in bondage;" or, 

been chained together by a rite the worid chose 
to call indissoluble ; they had been parted by a 
fierce and ineffaceable wrong ; after twenty years' 
severance, what could this man and woman, once 
connected by the closest tie, once parted by the 
hottest wordnetdesire, know of each other ? what could