“Whatever the manuscript may have to reveal to me,” she said, “it is time that I should know.” She took the package from the hiding place, and broke the seal. Slowly she read it to the end, as if anxious to make no error in understanding every phase of the long story it related. Beginning with the marriage of her mother to the French professor, Berene gave a detailed account of her own sad and troubled life, and the shadow which the father’s appetite for drugs cast over her whole youth. “They say,” she wrote, “that there is no personal devil in existence. I think this is true; he has taken the form of drugs and spirituous liquors, and so his work of devastation goes on.” Then followed the story of the sacrilegious marriage to save her father from suicide, of her early widowhood; and the proffer of the Baroness to give her a home. Of her life of servitude there, her yearning for an education, and her meeting with “Apollo,” as she designated Preston Cheney. “For truly he was like the glory of the rising day to me, the first to give me hope, courage and unselfish aid. I loved him, I worshipped him. He loved me, but he strove to crush and kill this love because he had worked out an ambitious career for himself. To extricate himself from many difficulties and embarrassments, and to further his ambitious dreams, he betrothed himself to the daughter of a rich and powerful man. He made no profession of love, and she asked none. She was incapable of giving or inspiring that holy passion. She only asked to be married. “I only asked to be loved. Knowing nothing of the terrible conflict in his breast, knowing nothing of his new-made ties, I was wounded to the soul by his speaking unkindly to me—words he forced himself to speak to hide his real feelings. And then it was that a strange fate caused him to find me fainting, suffering, and praying for death. The love in both hearts could no longer be restrained. Augmented by its long control, sharpened by the agony we had both suffered, overwhelmed by the surprise of the meeting, we lost reason and prudence. Everything was forgotten save our love. When it was too late I foresaw the anguish and sorrow I must bring into this man’s life. I fear it was this thought rather than repentance for sin which troubled me. Well may you ask why I did not think of all this before instead of after the error was committed. Why did not Eve realise the consequences of the fall until she had eaten of the apple? Only afterward did I learn of the unholy ties which my lover had formed that very day—ties which he swore to me should be broken ere another day passed, to render him free to make me his wife in the eyes of men, as I already was in the sight of God.