“You!” she cried, turning on him with a bitter, almost wild gesture. “_You_ wouldn't keer if I was struck _dead_ afore ye!” “Look here,” he said to her, with an agitation he could not master. “Let me tell you something about myself. If you think I am a passably good fellow you are mistaken. I am a bad fellow, a poor fellow, an ignoble fellow. You don't understand?” as she gazed at him in bewilderment. “No, of course, you don't. God knows I didn't myself until within the last two weeks. It's folly to say such things to you; perhaps I say them half to satisfy myself. But I mean to show you that I am not to be trusted. I think perhaps I am too poor a fellow to love any woman honestly and altogether. I followed one woman here, and then after all let another make me waver”-- “Another!” she faltered. He fixed his eyes on her almost coldly. “You,” he said. He seemed to cast the word at her and wonder what she would make of it He waited a second or so before he went on. “_You_, and yet you are not the woman I love either. Good God! What a villain I must be. I am an insult to every woman that breathes. It is not even you--though I can't break from you, and you have made me despise myself. There! do you know now--do you see now that I am not worth “-- The next instant he started backward. Before he had time for a thought she had uttered a low cry, and flung herself down at his feet. “I don't keer,” she panted; “I wont keer fur nothin',--whether ye're good or bad,--only don't leave me here when ye go away.” ***** A week later Lennox arose one morning and set about the task of getting his belongings together. He had been up late and had slept heavily and long. He felt exhausted and looked so. The day before, his model had given him his last sitting. The picture stood finished upon the easel. It was a thorough and artistic piece of work, and yet the sight of it was at times unbearable to him. There were times again, however, when it fascinated him anew when he went and stood opposite to it, regarding it with an intense gaze. He scarcely knew how the last week had passed. It seemed to have been spent in alternate feverish struggles and reckless abandonment to impulse. He had let himself drift here and there, he had at last gone so far as to tell himself that the time had arrived when baseness was possible to him. “I don't promise you an easy life,” he had said to Dusk the night before. “I tell you I am a bad fellow, and I have lost something through you that I cared for. You may wish yourself back again.” “If you leave me,” she said, “I'll kill myself!” and she struck her hands together. For the moment he was filled, as he often was, with a sense of passionate admiration. It was true he saw her as no other creature had ever seen her before, that so far as such a thing was possible with her, she loved him--loved him with a fierce, unreserved, yet narrow passion.