The last words she whispered with infinite tenderness, and her head fell
on his breast. Hysterically they clasped each other in their arms and,
half laughing, half sobbing, looked into each other's eyes. Karl leaned
over her, murmuring his love and kissing her eyes and hair.
"Be careful; he is in there," Olga warned him finally, again pointing at
the door behind which their evil spirit lurked. Then she whispered
shyly:
"Did my letter surprise you?"
"Letter?" Karl asked, astonished. "What letter, dear heart?"
"Karl, I understand you wish to be discreet," Olga said reproachfully,
"but it is my first letter and I am not ashamed. Let us be honest; I am
not afraid. I love you. When I wrote that letter I hardly knew what I
was doing, and I must confess I felt ashamed at first. But I am no
longer ashamed now; I am proud. Sometimes women do not write what they
want, Karl, but they always want what they write. Karl, I would like to
read that letter over again in your arms."
That letter meant much to Olga; it was her only love letter. She had
never written to Karl before, except in the conventional boy and girl
fashion, when she did not know how to express love. Her correspondence
with Herman had always been of the most perfunctory sort. Never before
had she poured out her soul as she did in this letter. Now she wanted to
see what she had written; to read it over with the man for whom it was
intended.
It was with a shock of pain that she beheld Karl's indifference, and she
was amazed when he added:
"I received no letter from you, Olga."
"What! how can you say so? Was not a letter delivered to you this
morning?"
"I assure you that I did not receive any letter from you," Karl said
earnestly.
The realization of Millar's trick was like a blow in the face to Olga.
She saw now how he had deliberately lied to her, in order that she would
certainly repeat her confession of love to Karl. In what a bold,
forward, disloyal attitude she had been placed! Her first impulse was of
anger, and she ran toward the anteroom.
"Doctor! Dr. Millar!" she called wildly.
The door opened noiselessly and Millar stood bowing on the threshold.
"My--my letter!" Olga stammered.
"Madam, I beg a thousand pardons," Millar said suavely. "My only excuse
is that some letters are better undelivered."
He drew from the inner pocket of his coat a letter, and with a smile and
a sweeping bow handed it to Karl.
"However, I can now make reparation," he said.
Karl took the letter, looking wonderingly from Olga to Millar. He held
it an instant in his hand and was about to open it, when Olga cried:
"Karl, tear the letter up."
Karl instantly obeyed her, tearing the envelope into small pieces.
"Now burn it," Olga said.
He stepped over to the fireplace and threw the bits of paper on the
glowing coals. They started up in a little flame and were quickly
reduced to ashes.
Olga was terrified at the trick Millar had played upon her and at its
results. She looked in fear from him to Karl.
"Who is this man?" she asked.
Karl could not answer her. The same question was echoing in his heart.
Who was this man, this personification of evil? Ever there were his
insidious wiles to compromise, cajole, trick and betray them. He could
not tell. He only knew that he loathed him and that he would drive him
out.
"Are you going now?" he demanded, as Millar stood looking at them with
his evil smile.
Millar took the question in the most natural way, disregarding the
purposely offensive tone in which Karl spoke.
"Yes, I am; I must," he said, half regretfully. "My train leaves in half
an hour. Again permit me to beg a thousand pardons. Could I have
foreseen the anguish that was to follow my failure to deliver madam's
letter, nothing in the world could have----"
Karl interrupted him rudely, determined that he should not beguile them
again and that he should not speak of Olga or the letter as a thing of
importance.
"You should know that the letter contained only a conventional message,"
he said.
Millar looked at Olga, and his smile grew broad as she hung her head and
blushed. Who should know better than he the confession which she had
written and which was now destroyed?
"It was quite conventional, I am sure," he said cynically.
"You will miss your train," Karl said with studied insolence. "Heinrich,
help the doctor on with his coat."
"A thousand thanks," the imperturbable Millar said. "Madam, good-by. And
once more I beg a thousand pardons."
Neither Olga nor Karl spoke to him as he walked to the door, looked back
at them, bowed low again and chuckled as the door closed after him.
Olga turned quickly to Karl and held out her hands.
"He is gone. I am glad. But, Karl, I would have given a year of my life
if he had delivered my letter to you."
"Why? Tell me what you wrote," he asked eagerly.
"I wrote all the things I told you a few moments ago, Karl. You know it
all now."
She went over to the grate and looked sadly into the ashes.
"My first love letter," she said softly. "Oh, Karl, it was my confession
of my love for you. I would like to read it over again with you, and
then we might forget. I don't want to be afraid. I want to be strong, to
be happy. If I only had that letter now."
Karl took her hands in his, and comforted her.
"Never mind it, Olga; it has served its purpose. It has taught us
ourselves, our hearts."
"It has taught us that we must be strong, brave and loyal," Olga
declared warmly.
They stood thus, looking into each other's eyes, sanely, clearly, each
ready to renounce. The door of the studio opened and Millar stood before
them again, holding in his extended hand a letter.
"I beg a thousand pardons again," he said. "I find I gave Karl an old
tailor's bill instead of madam's letter."
Olga eagerly took the letter, opened it and recognized her own
handwriting.
"My letter, Karl!" she exclaimed.
Both bent close over the letter, reading it eagerly, while Millar
slipped quietly out of the studio--out of their lives. Olga looked up
from their reading.
"I am glad that I wrote it, Karl," she said. "Now we will burn it."
Together they watched it glow brightly into flame and fall into gray
ashes.
"That is our love begun and ended, Karl," Olga said quietly. "It was
wrong, and now we realize it, don't we? And now, dear boy, you are
coming with me."
"Where?" Karl asked.
"I am going to take you to Elsa," Olga answered.
With a feeling of elation, Karl called Heinrich, and was helped into his
overcoat. He bent respectfully and kissed Olga's hand as they walked out
of the studio together.
THE END
THE MORAL OF "THE DEVIL"
BY ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
Copyright, 1908, by American Journal-Examiner.
In every human organization dwell the _Twins_--the Angel and the Demon.
The Angel is the real self; the enduring, immortal self, which goes on
from life to life, from planet to planet, until it has made the circuit
and ended where it began--at the _Source_.
The Demon is man made; it belongs to the changing, perishable bodies
which are created anew with each incarnation; and it goes down, and out,
into nothingness, with the disintegration of the animal body.
But with each new body, the mortal being usually invents, or adopts, a
new Devil.
A few great souls have passed along through earth without such
demoniacal association; Christ, the latest and greatest of the Masters,
held converse with the Devil once, on the mountain top, when He was
tempted; but that was His only acquaintance with him, because He had
finished His circuit, and was ready to become _one with God_.
A weak man or woman, with good intentions and desirous of leading a
moral life, but lacking _will power_, and inclined to be timid, and
fearful, and negative in thought, often adopts a Devil formed by some
selfish and licentious person, who fashions Devils by the wholesale and
sends them out to roam over the earth, seeking an open door in a weak
mind.
When such occurrences are analyzed they are usually called hypnotism.
In every liquor saloon, in every gambling den, in every boldly vicious
and immoral place, about every race track and pool room, Devils swarm.
And the weak, the dissipated, the thoughtless and the irresponsible
minds are the open doors for them to mass through, into dominion of the
human citadel.
In many drawing-rooms of fashion, in brilliant restaurants and hotels,
where the elite congregate; in sensuously decorated studios, Devils
also wait day and night, knowing that they will be entertained, if not
welcomed, by some of the self-indulgent frequenters of these places.
Many are the devices employed by the Devils of earth to bring about the
desired results.
Drinks, drugs, avarice, money mania, jealousy, love of power, desire to
outshine neighbors, lust, sensuality, gross appetites, gourmandism, love
of praise, personal conceit and egotism, selfishness in every form--all
these are webs which the Devils spin about humanity.
Even beautiful, romantic sentiment, memory and imagination, become aids
of the Devil, at times, when coarser and more common methods fail in the
snaring of a refined soul.
Many a good wife, who shrinks with horror at the thought of a vulgar
amour, or of any act which could pain or anger her husband, has been led
into the Devil's net by indulging in retrospective dreams of a vanished
romance and through the stirring of old ashes to see if one little spark
remained.
Letter writing is a favorite pastime of almost all Devils. Once they get
a romantic man or woman, with a pen in hand and an unoccupied chamber in
the heart, and the breed of Devils who hang about the domestic hearth,
hoping to find rooms to let, chuckle in glee.
Wives who have believed themselves happy and satisfied, husbands who
have been unconscious of any lack in their lives, have fallen by the
wayside through an interesting correspondence with some sympathetic
"affinity," who was Devil-instructed to lead them into trouble.
After a man or woman falls into the Devil's snare they both call it
Fate, and proclaim their inability to combat the powerful influence of
"destiny."
But destiny is _man himself_.
The Angel dwells always within him, ready to say, "Get thee behind me,
Satan," if the man really wants it said.
The Angel and the Devil both are completely under man's control; the
work of man, here in this sphere and in every other, is to develop the
_character which will enable him to get back to the Source_.
Unless the man directs the Angel to take the ascendancy, there would be
no growth in wisdom for him were the Angel to interpose. So he remains
silent and lets the Devil do his work, in order that man may find out
for himself the pain and folly of such dominion; and in order that when
he again encounters the Devil, either in this plane of existence or some
other, he may be able to say as Christ said, "Get thee behind me."
Always have there been Devils; always will there be Devils, while
humanity is evolving from the lower to the higher states.
But always is there the Angel, ready to lead the soul to conquest and
victory if the soul will call.
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[Transcriber's Note: A table of contents has been created for this
electronic book. In addition, the following typographical errors from
the original edition have been corrected.
In Chapter III, a triple quotation mark following "You were not here
when I entered" and a single quotation mark preceding "Your future wife
will swear" were changed to double quotation marks, and "sip the sweeest
wine" was changed to "sip the sweetest wine".
In Chapter VI, a quotation mark was added following "a found treasure".
In Chapter VIII, "the fulfilment of her puropse" was changed to "the
fulfilment of her purpose", and "every detal of his dress" was changed
to "every detail of his dress".
In Chapter IX, quotation marks were removed in front of "Don't you want
to speak to her?" and ""With a wild cry", "the indignation of the yiung
artist" was changed to "the indignation of the young artist", and "He
advanced determedly" was changed to "He advanced determinedly".
In the advertisements, a comma following "Boston Transcript" was changed
to a period, "dominant personalties" was changed to "dominant
personalties", and "Medalion in color" was changed to "Medallion in
color".
No other corrections were made to the text.]