"My father died when I was but a child, and left me the only heir to an independent fortune. I grew into early manhood with this knowledge--a sad knowledge for any youth, because it leaves him with the consciousness that he need not exert his own powers of brain or muscle to make a name and place in Society. My mother died when I was fifteen--just at the time I most needed her gentle counsels, and refining influence. I was selfish, proud, passionate, strong-willed. But I tried to make a man of myself for the sake of my mother's memory. I believed all women were saints, because she was one. At twenty I met a beautiful woman, two or three years my senior. She possessed a magnificent form, and a face of wonderful brunette beauty. Every man in my circle was raving over her, and I became madly infatuated. I asked her to be my wife and she consented. I reveled in dreams of a home--something I had not known since my mother died. A few days before the time set for our wedding, I discovered that the woman I worshiped was making sport of me, and that she had promised to be my wife only to secure my fortune. More shocking still, she was carrying on the most flagrant infidelities, which were the talk of the club-rooms, while I, poor dupe, only discovered the horrible truth at the last hour. I was but a youth, and this experience nearly wrecked my life. "I lost faith in every thing, human and divine, for a time. As years passed my wound healed, but all my views of life were changed. I looked upon women as vain, frivolous and deceitful, and whatever amusement they could afford me, I considered myself justified in taking. Marriage seemed to me a bondage, and love a dream sure to end in misery: a dream which could never disturb my heart again. "After years of travel, adventure and folly, when a wearisome ennui toward the whole world had taken possession of me, I met a lovely woman. "She also abhorred marriage, and had sworn eternal warfare against it. She was more pronounced and bitter in her denunciations of the social system than I. She was a charming companion; but I felt that the association was dangerous, and tried to fly from it. A perverse fate, however, constantly threw us together. Finally, she was left entirely alone in the world. In an evil hour, when she was weeping because her life was so desolate, I asked her to decide between the society she despised, and my companionship and protection." He paused. It was hard to go on with those truthful, earnest, pure eyes gazing at him. How could he make her understand? "Well--and what was her answer?" Helena asked, almost in a whisper. "She has been living in pleasant apartments in New York, as my friend and comrade, for almost two years. Do you understand?" "I understand," she answered, and a sudden chill shook her from head to foot.