“Utterly willing,” he said, “but timid, timid as a doctor would be about prescribing for his own child. Yours is the first case ever brought to me in which I feared the effect of personal bias dimming my insight or deflecting my judgment. I have a second confession to make to you. Before you married, a man desperately in love with you came to me for help. Among other things he gave me the day, hour and minute of your birth and of his and asked me to cast both horoscopes and infer his chances of success. I had and have no faith in astrology, yet I had cast my own horoscope long before from mere curiosity. When I cast yours I was amazed at the clear indications of a connection between your fate and mine. I did not believe anything of the Babylonian absurdities, yet the coincidence struck me. Perhaps I am influenced by it yet. Under such an influence, even more than under that of my feeling for yourself, my acumen is likely to be impaired. I again advise you to go elsewhere.” “I am all the more determined to consult you and you only.” He bowed without any word and waited in silence for her to go on. She stared at him with big melting eyes, her face very pale. “My husband does not love me,” she said. “Not love you?” Vargas exclaimed, startled. “Do you mean seriously to tell me that, you who have been loved by hundreds, been adored, worshipped, courted by so many, for despair of gaining whom men have gone mad, who have had your choice of so many lovers, are not prized by the man who succeeded in winning you?” “Yes,” she barely breathed. “He does not prize me, nor love me at all.” “Does he love any one else?” Out of her total paleness she flushed rose pink from throat to hair. “Yes,” she admitted. “Who is she?” Vargas demanded. “His first wife.” Vargas staggered to his feet. “I did not so much as know that your husband had been married before,” he gasped, “let alone that he was divorced.” “He was not divorced,” she stated. “Not divorced,” he quavered. “No, he was a widower when I married him.” Vargas collapsed back into his chair. “I do not understand,” he told her. “Does he love a dead woman?” “Just that,” she asseverated. “This will not do,” the clairvoyant told her, “I cannot come nearer to helping you at this rate. Try to give me the information you think necessary, not by splinters and fragments, but as a whole. Make a connected exposition of the circumstances. Begin at the beginning!” “That is harder,” she mused, “I always want to begin anything at the last chapter.” “Woman fashion,” he commented. “You are above that in most things, I know. Try a straight story from the beginning.” She reflected: