"I have staked my all, all my happiness and peace, upon a cast and have lost. I am very badly hit, and naturally I feel it very badly for a time!" "Ley!" she murmured, reproachfully, "you must not talk to _me_ like this; speak from your heart." "I haven't any left, Lil!" he said; "there is only an aching void where my heart used to be. I lost it weeks ago--or was it months or years? I can't tell which now!--and she to whom I gave it, she whom I thought an angel of purity, a dove of innocence, has thrown it in the dirt and trampled upon it!" "Ley, Ley, you torture me! Of whom are you speaking?" "Of whom should I be speaking but the one woman the world holds for me?" "Lenore!" she murmured, incredulously. "Lenore!" and he laughed bitterly. "No; she did not pronounce her name so. I am speaking and thinking of Stella Etheridge." Her hand trembled, but she did not withdraw it. "Stella?" "Yes," he said, and his lips twitched. "A star. A star that will shine in another man's bosom, not in mine as I, fool that I was, dreamed that it would. Lil, I believe that there is only one good woman in the world, and she sits near me now." "Oh, Ley, Ley--but tell me!" "There is so little to tell," he said, wearily. "I cannot tell you all. This will suffice, that to-night I expected and hoped to have been able to call her my wife, instead--well, you see, I am sitting here!" "Your wife?" she murmured. "Stella Etheridge your wife. Was that--that wise, Ley?" "Wise! What have I to do with wisdom?" he retorted. "I loved her--loved her passionately, madly, as I never, nor shall ever, love another woman! Heaven help me, I love her now! Don't you see that is the worst part of it. I know, as surely as I am sitting here, that my life has gone. It has gone to pieces on the rocks like a goodly ship, and there is an end of it!" There was silence for a moment, then she spoke, and, woman-like, her thoughts were of the woman. "But she, Ley? How is it with her?" He laughed again, and the gentle girl shuddered. "Don't Ley," she murmured. "She will be all right," he said. "Women are made like that--all excepting one," and he touched her dress. "And yet--and yet," she murmured, troubled and sorrowful, "now I look back I am sure that she loved you, Ley! I remember her face, the look of her eyes, the way she spoke your name. Oh, Ley, she loved you!" "She did--perhaps. She loves me now so well, that on our wedding-day--wedding-day!--she allows a man to step in between us and claim her as his own!" Maddened by the memory which her words had called up he would have risen, but she held him down with a gentle hand. "A man! What man, Ley?"