He asked this question with an air of triumph that, to the listener, seemed to have something in it of conscious cunning. Gault answered with a commonplace about the advantage of inspiring so great a trust in the vulgar mind. The colonel was openly gratified. "Oh," he said, as he moved toward the door, "there's something in the name of Ramsay Reed yet. But not enough," he added, laughing with a mischievous appreciation of the humor of his misfortunes, "to let a grocery bill run on indefinitely. There was a day when my name was good for any length of time--but that was thirty years ago." Then he left, smiling and happy, and on the way home bought a pot of pâté de foie gras, a bottle of claret, and a handkerchief with an embroidered edge for Viola. At the grocery store on the corner of the street where he lived he stopped and paid twenty dollars on his bill, and then fared up the street with rapid strides, all agog with pleasure at the thought of Viola's delight in his present, and the jolly little supper they would have on the end of the kitchen table. The man who had made these innocent pleasures possible was far from enjoying those sensations of gratification said to be experienced by a cheerful giver. He had begun to know very dark hours. His first great love, come tardily and reluctantly, at an age when the heart is almost closed to soft influences and the mind is hardened with much worldly contact, had come poisoned with torturing suspicions, with shame for his own weakness, with fears of the truth. Had he been a stronger man he would have torn up by the roots this passion for a woman he dared not trust, have gone away and tried to forget. But the lifelong habit of self-indulgence was too powerful to be broken. He did not want to try and live without the charm and torment of Viola's presence. Had he been weaker he would have yielded to the spell, never dared to question, and gone on blindly into the purgatory of those who love and doubt. All his life he had retained an ideal of womanhood--a creature aloof from the coarseness of worldly ambition and vulgar greed. Now he found himself bound to one the breath of whose life seemed to be tainted with duplicity and sordid intrigue.