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After the first excitement of that evening, the countess seemed calmer. When she and Roberto chanced to be alone together, and he talked,-talked as if he were afraid of silence,- she listened with an abstracted smile, leaning back in her easy-chair near the fire, which lighted up her dark hair, and her fine profile, which in contrast with the light seemed like a cameo.

But a cloud seemed to hover between mother and daughter in the intimacy of the family: an annoying and insurmountable coolness which quenched all affectionate confidences; an embarrassment that rendered disquieting all Roberto's acts of politeness toward either of them, and sometimes even his presence with them as if it were a shadow of the past, clouding the daughter's eyes, sending the color from the mother's cheeks, and even disturbing Roberto from time to time. A tinge of bitterness could be detected in the simplest words, in smiles which expected no return, in glances which passed from one to the other full of suspicion.

One evening when Bice had retired earlier than usual, and Roberto had remained in the parlor with the countess to keep her company, silence suddenly fell between them with a strange sense of impending evil. Anna was standing with bent head before the dying fire, shivering from time to time; and the lamp placed on the mantelpiece threw golden reflections on the masses of her hair, on the delicate nape of her neck, which seemed also to be lighted up with wandering flames. As Roberto stooped over to pick up the tongs, she gave a sudden start and bade him good-night, saying that she felt weary. The marquis accompanied her to the door: he also felt the impulse of a vague uneasiness. At that instant Bice appeared looking like a ghost, clad in a white dressing-sack. Mother and daughter looked at each other, and the former stood speechless, almost breathless. Roberto, the least embarrassed of the three, asked, "What is the matter, Bice?"

"Nothing. I couldn't go to sleep. What time is it?"

"It is not late. Your mother was just going to bed; she said she felt tired."

"Ah!" replied Bice. "Ah!" That was all she said.

Anna, still trembling, murmured with a sad smile, "Yes, I am tired; at my age- my children!—»

"Ah!" said Bice again.

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Then the mother, growing pale as death, as if choked by unspeakable anguish, added with the same melancholy smile, "Don't you believe me? Don't you believe,, Bice?" And lifting her hair a little from her temples, she showed her that the locks underneath were all white.

"Oh, it is a long time-a long, long time!"

Bice, with an affectionate impulse, threw her arms around her neck, and hid her face without saying another word. And her mother's hands could feel how she was all trembling. Roberto, who felt as if he were on pins and needles, had turned to go out, seeing that his presence must be annoying under the circumstances. At that instant his eyes and Anna's met. He flushed, and for a moment there seemed to flash forth a recollection of the past.

The Countess Anna spent two weeks in her daughter's house, feeling all the time that she was an outsider, not only to Bice but also to Roberto. How changed they were! When he gave her his arm to go out to the dining-room-when Bice addressed her as "mama" without looking at her, and blushed when she spoke of her husband

"Forget! Be calm!" she had said to Roberto, and neither the one nor the other had forgotten at all.

Sometimes,

She shut her eyes and shuddered at the thought. suddenly, she was overwhelmed by flashes of anger, of a strange unreasoning jealousy. He had robbed her of her daughter's heart! This man had taken everything from her!

One evening a great commotion was heard in the house. Carriages and servants were dispatched hastily in various directions. The physician and a woman came anxiously, and were instantly ushered into Bice's apartment. And not one came after her; her own daughter did not wish her to be present at this crisis of her life. No, no one of them had forgotten! When the man himself came to announce the birth of her granddaughter! when she saw him trembling and radiant-no, she had never seen him look that way before;-when she saw him by Bice's bedside, where the young mother lay pale as if she were dead, and his eyes. filled with love for her alone, when his eyes looked only at her!- then she felt an implacable hatred toward this man, who caressed her daughter in her presence, and who even at that moment received Bice's answering smile.

When they gave her name to the little granddaughter, and she held the child in her arms at the baptismal service, she said with a smile, "Now I can die."

Bice was slow in recovering her strength. Her delicate organism was still shaken. In the long days of convalescence, dark thoughts came to her mind,-moods of fierce and unreasonable irritation, of melancholy, as if she were neglected by every one. Then she would give her husband a strange look out of her clouded eyes and say, "Where have you been? Where are you going? Why do you leave me alone?"

Everything hurt her feelings: she even seemed to be jealous of the relics of beauty which her mother still possessed. And one day, trying to hide the eagerness which in spite of her gleamed in her eyes, she went so far as to ask her when she intended to go home.

The mother bent her head as if under the weight of an inevitable punishment.

But afterwards Bice became her natural self, and seemed to be asking forgiveness of them all by means of affectionate words and kisses. As soon as she was able to leave her bed, the countess set the day of her departure. When they bade each other farewell at the station, both mother and daughter were deeply affected: they kissed each other, and at the last moment, were as unable to say a word as if they never expected to meet again!

The countess reached home late at night, deeply depressed, benumbed with cold. The great deserted house was also cold, in spite of the great fire that had been lighted, in spite of the solitary lights in the melancholy rooms.

The Countess Anna's health rapidly failed. At first she attrib uted it to her weariness after the journey, the excitement, the severity of the season. For about three months she vibrated between her bed and her lounge, and the doctor came to see her every day.

"It is nothing," she would say. "To-day I feel better. Tomorrow I shall get up."

To her daughter she wrote regularly, but without referring to the seriousness of the disease that was killing her. Toward the beginning of the autumn she seemed to be really getting better; but all of a sudden she grew so much worse that her household felt obliged to telegraph to the marquis.

Roberto came the following day, greatly alarmed.

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"Bice is not well," he said to the doctor who was awaiting him. "I am anxious about her too. She knows nothing about it. I was afraid that the news - the excitement the journey - » "You are right. The marchesa's health must be carefully watched. It is a disease that runs in the blood, surely. I myself should not have assumed such a responsibility; and if it had not been for the gravity of the case—»

"Is it very serious?" asked Roberto.

The doctor made a motion with his head.

The sick woman, as soon as her son-in-law's arrival was announced, became greatly agitated.

"And Bice?" she asked as soon as she saw him, "why did she not come ?"

He hesitated, grew as pale as she was, and felt a cold perspiration at the roots of his hair.

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did you tell her not to come?" she asked

in a choked and broken voice.

He had never heard that voice nor seen those eyes before. A woman, leaning over the pillow, endeavored to calm the invalid. Finally she relapsed into silence, closing her eyes, and convulsively clasping her hands over her bosom.

Her last confession was made that evening. After she had partaken of the Communion she had her son-in law called in again, and she pressed his hand as if to ask his pardon.

The vague odor of the incense still hovered in the room,the odor of death,-now and again overcome by the sharper odor of ether, penetrating and choking. Livid shadows seemed to wander over the face of the dying countess.

"Tell her," murmured the poor woman, "tell my daughter- » She struggled with shortness of breath, which choked the words that she wanted to speak, and made her eyes roll as in delirium. Then she signified with a pitiful motion of her head that she could say no more.

From time to time it was necessary to lift from the pillows her poor wasted body, in the supreme anguish of the death-agony. But she signified that Roberto was not to touch her. Her hair, which was white as snow, was in disorder.

"No-no-" those were her last words, heard indistinctly murmured. She put up her hands to join together the nightrobe, which had opened at the neck; and thus with her hands folded she passed away.

ÉMILE VERHAEREN

(1855-1916)

BY AMY LOWELL

ELGIUM, which might well be thought to have plumbed the lowest depths of misfortune; Belgium, which is dying of want and misery in a darkness which we dare not penetrate lest we be overwhelmed with despair; Belgium has lost the one voice that was worthy and able to proclaim her distress and make it known to the world. . . .

«He stood for Belgium in every part of her being. The world has never seen, the world may seek in vain for, another poet who so truly embodied within himself the soul of a country. Flemish by birth and ancestry, Walloon, that is French, in mind and speech, he was indeed the twin-faced poet of this twin-headed people; yet his heart was single; and its singleness has been well proved.>>

These are Maurice Maeterlinck's words, in an article written since the tragic death of his friend and confrère, Émile Verhaeren. Verhaeren and Maeterlinck stand as the two pinnacles of Belgian literature during the latter half of the nineteenth, and the first decade of the twentieth century. We think of Maeterlinck primarily as a dramatist, although he also writes poems; we think of Verhaeren primarily as a poet, although he also wrote plays. Together they are Belgium, the Belgium of vigorous, energetic materialism, no less than the Belgium of poetic mysticism. Maeterlinck represents the latter, but Verhaeren represents both. He does more, he is the very soul of the modern world.

Belgians may point to him proudly as the embodiment of their nation, but we, who are not Belgians, recognize in him a greater universality. There is scarcely a side of the life of to-day upon which he does not touch. He is of the country and of the city; of imagination and of reality; of ideals and of gross fact. His is the temperament of the believer, and the mind of the agnostic. Profoundly touched by the thoughts and aims of modern times, he never loses sympathy with the charm of things old and half-forgotten. To quote another Belgian writer, Émile Cammaerts, he is «energy and dream.»>

Other poets have pursued one or another of the ideals for which he strove, but in no other modern is so embracing an endeavor. His poems are rich in thought, but the thought is not permitted to usurp the place of poetry, for Verhaeren is always an artist.

At the time when (Symbolisme) was flourishing in France, Ver

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