out. He ordered her to go, and she laughed in his face and asked him how he would like to read every morning in the _Golden Era_ that James Randolph's wife had spent the night in the calaboose. Now, only two or three people besides the Hathaways and Shropshires even suspected it, so carefully had Cochrane watched her. "He sent me to boarding-school. She kept me in money, and I got what I wanted, although my father's pride was in me, and I never took enough to betray my secret. It was not until I had finished school that I really gave way to the appetite. My father, closely as he watched me, did not suspect for a long time. He was very busy,--he threw himself heart and soul into the development of the city,--and when the appetite mastered me, I either feigned illness or went to the country. At last he found it out. There have been many bitter hours in my life, but that was incomparably the bitterest. I had always loved him devotedly. When he went down on his knees and begged me to stop, of course I swore that I would. I kept my promise for six months, she doing all she could to entice me the while. Then I yielded. After that, after another interview with my father, I restrained the intolerable craving for another six months. Then it went on irregularly. I don't know that I began to think much, to look into the future, until about a year ago--it was when I first saw her as you saw her that night. Then I aged suddenly. My moral sense awakened, my sense of personal responsibility. I loathed myself. I looked upon what I had become with horror. I struggled fiercely,--but with indifferent success,--although, I must add, there were weeks at a time when I never thought of it; for I have the _joie de vivre_, and there are many distractions in society. Then you came. For a time I was happy and excited, and the thing was in abeyance. I touched nothing: that was my only chance. I fought it under,--after that first night,--and the desire did not come again until I drank the mescal at Don Tiburcio's _merienda_. But I had known that it would come back sooner or later, and was determined not to marry you, nor to let myself fall seriously in love with you. But after that first night out on the strawberry patches I knew that I loved you, and, as I am not a light-minded person, irrevocably. But I made up my mind to enjoy that week, and look no farther. You know the rest. What I have suffered since perhaps you can divine, if you love me. If you don't, it doesn't matter." Her monotonous calm left her suddenly. She brought her fist down on the table. "This room is full of the smell of it!" she cried. "And I want it! I want it!" She pushed back her chair. "Come," she said, "let us go outside." She ran out to the verandah. He followed, and she grasped his arm. "Let us go for a ride," she said. "I shall go off my head, if I keep still another moment. I want motion. Are you tired?" "No, I am not tired."