"Oh!" she cried, "so highly placed, so powerful, so flattered and so sought, why could you not pass _me_ by? Why need you stoop to break so poor and lowly a thing? You were cowardly! you were cruel! No wonder you are silent--had you no truth, no honor, no love?" He answered, still very low: "Of truth and honor, very little, but love?" he looked at her with devouring eyes, "dear God, _love_?" And she repeated bitterly, jeeringly: "Love? You, a married man?" He smiled a little and answered, gently: "Love comes as it wills, and--and--" There he stopped, for he saw by the horror in her eyes that for the first time she saw in their relations simply sin, bereft of all sophistry, and he was dumb--he, the clever, the brilliant, usually so full of subtlety and finesse, who in a like situation in the past would have laughingly denounced the folly of blushing for an undiscovered sin, or have gayly taught his fair companion in guilt that eleventh commandment, so dear to the worldly man and the light woman: "Be ye not found out, for of such is the kingdom of the Successful." He stood with all the artifices stricken from him, incapable of specious argument, of trick or wile of any kind. Erstwhile, where money had had power to tempt, he had seen that money had power to comfort, too--but not here! not here! Where grief and passionate reproach looked from eyes that yesterday had shone all radiant with love--her glory then--her shame to-day! And all there was of manhood in him was roused to vehement longing to honor publicly the creature whom he had secretly dishonored. "Oh!" she moaned, helplessly, "what shall I do with my life! I am ashamed to look back--I am afraid to look forward! They said there was no sex in art! And when you showed such patience with me and my ignorance, I almost worshipped you, and hoped art might make me as generous in time! But it was your approval I toiled for! It was your acting that I strove to emulate! Perhaps you thought I was not grateful; but, oh, I was! I was! And I used to think if I ever wore the dramatic crown I yearned for, I'd proudly tell to all the world whose hand had placed it in my reach! Perhaps if you had known how humbly grateful I was, you would not have made me pay this awful price!" The man's jaws clenched so tightly that their outlines showed white on his cheeks. "As a conquest, Mr. Thrall, I am scarcely worthy of your skill, and yet my being a 'society débutante' may add a slight fillip of novelty to the old, old story of ruined girlhood--such trifles help, no doubt, to keep up an actor's popularity!" "You are very cruel!" he groaned. "_I?_" she cried, accusingly, "_I_ am cruel?" "Yes; it is cruel to take pleasure in another's pain, but--" He closed his eyes an instant, and then went on very patiently. "I may not ask you for mercy. Being guilty, it is right I _should_ suffer!"