But his joy was speedily swallowed up in the gloom of mortifying reflections. Could it be that his love was so inconstant as to transfer itself in a few days from Marien Dounay to Bessie Mitchell, and if it did, what was such love worth? Besides, how could he love Bessie as he had loved Marien. There was no fire in her. As yet, she was only a girl. But at this juncture a memory came floating in of that day on the Cliff House rocks, when some vague impulse, which he thought to be sympathy, had made him draw Bessie’s face up to his and kiss it. Now, as he recalled it, the touch of her lips was the touch of a woman; and her look that puzzled him then,—why, it was the look of love! Hampstead leaped up excitedly. Bessie was a woman, and she loved him! And he loved her! But how could he have been such a fool as to think that he loved Marien? "Passion," he told himself scornfully, "mere passion." "She was the first ripe woman I ever touched, and I fell for her! That’s all," he muttered. "But, how could I ever, ever, ever have done it?" Heaping bitter self-reproaches, he took his bewildered head in his hands, while he wrestled with the humiliating chain of ruminations. Naturally enough, it was the memory of a speech of Marien’s which afforded him his first clue. "In what you have just been saying, you have given me a character," she had replied to one of his advances. "If I could play that part always, I should be what you are in love with, and you would love me always; but I cannot play it always; I can play it seldom. I play it now for an hour and then perhaps never again." This speech, vexatiously enigmatic then, sounded suddenly rational now. It meant that he had unconsciously bestowed upon her his idealized conception of womanhood. This was made comparatively easy because in the plays Marien almost invariably enacted the heroines, always sweet, always gentle, and almost always good; or, if erring, they were more sinned against than sinning. Most of these piled-up virtues of her rôles John dotingly had ascribed to her, and his professional contacts afforded few glimpses of the real Marien by which his drawing could be corrected. Atop of this had come those few hours of delicious intimacy in her apartment, when she had deliberately played the part she saw that he would like. This had sufficed to make his illusion complete.