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yon in the future.""Ah!" he

Had she lived longer I should have followed the example of William Saltone. Life would have been too great a burden.""You surprise me," I said, "by this confession—pardon the word; but I saw nothing in Madam Davenant to excuse so desperate a course on your part. William Saltone loved her passionately.""And died by his own handl""Yes," I said, "but he was insane. Her affection for him was profound; he speaks of it in their correspondence which I have just given to you. It proves that an ardent attaohment existed between Julia Saltone and her husband. His suicide was not, then, caused by unhappiness in the marriage relation."A lurid flash illumed the eyes of Davenant. He raised his hand Coach Factory Outlet Online impatiently. "Listen to me," he said, "and I will try to explain something which has never yet been explained or even expressed by living man. You may have read somewhere the allegorical story of the Vampire:—a human being, to appearance, but human in form alone; a body inhabited by a demon, prolonging its existence in the flesh by draining the heart's blood of a lover through a small invisible wound. Madam Davenant was not a Coach Outlet Store Online vampire Coach Outlet Online in that sense; but William Saltone, her lover and beloved, destroyed himself; and I should have done the same but for the blessed accident of her death. Whether it was a physical influence, like the pretended power of magnetism, I know not; perhaps it may have been her vast strength of will, aided by an abysmal subtlety and cunning. Conjecture is vain in such matters. We do not understand the laws of these foroes—nevertheless we live or die by them. Madam Davenant killed William Saltone: she first destroyed his reason by this nameless and subtle power; she exhausted his vitality; she drew his life and soul into herself, and left him without character or force. The struggle of the natural man against this horrid influence, which seemed to him Jonly a phase of his passion, inordinate and absorbing, sapped the reason of the victim, and his death became necessary. Like myself, William Saltone was a man of high aspirations, but they were social Coach Outlet and ambitious as mine are intellectual. His wife, a woman of strong passion, loved him with ardour beoause of this and other harmonies and agreements in their moral and physical natures. In spite of these, I repeat it, he fell under the Vampire influence of her iron will, exercised with absorbing cruelty and selfishness. Madam Davenant controlled every person within her reach. She did this without effort. The moral power was so intense and immediate, to be in contact with her was to yield without an effort. As I have before said, the strong and cultivated nature of the man revolted, and this conflict ended in the loss of reason and of life. He died loving and hating the same object. My passion was only hate.""But with you?" I asked, wondering and curious."With me it was the same. Julia Saltone willed that I should marry her: and I did so. She had better have taken my life. Every action she willed it was impossible for me not to perform. There was infernal magic in it. I struggled in vain against her: at length I discovered that, whatever might be the case with my actions, intellect was still free; I could plot and devise; I could maintain silence and secrecy; in mind I was not a slave. In social relations I was, in fact, a tool—an idiot—the servant of her will. Worse—still worse—she knew this and exercised her power consciously. She would even speak of it to me. Believe me or not, if she discovered any purpose of mine and opposed it, I could not act. Imagine the horror of my situation. It was death —worse than death.""Did you never quarrel?""Quarrel? What! with an elephant that could play at chess with yon as if you were a pawn? As well might the needle have quarrelled with the magnet! Enough; I have told you all. Let us forget it now," said he, with a feeble effort at a smile."Perhaps," I said, as he rose to leave me, "there is a better life for yon in the future.""Ah!" he answered, looking at me with a timid expression, " I dread the future. I will try, but there are remorses I can not forget."