“At nineteen her figure was unsurpassable. Indeed, I think there cannot be a more beautiful and charming woman in America. She is now twenty. “It was my privilege to view closely the bursting of this bud into bloom.” The fin de siècle versewright became silent and lighted a fresh cigarette. “Will you permit me to ask,” said I, “what were the especial facilities that you had for observing this evolution?” “Yes,” he answered, softly, a tender look coming into his eyes. “She is my wife. She was thirteen when I married her. Suddenly placed without means of subsistence, knowing nothing of the world, she came to me. I could see no other way. We are very happy together.” The pretty narrative of the rhymer put each of us in a delectable mood. The notes of a harp and violins came from the lower deck in the form of a seductive Italian melody. White sails dotted the far-reaching sea. XIX. -- A MAN WHO WAS NO GOOD Hearken to the tale of how fortune fell to the widow of Busted Blake. The outcome has shown that “Busted” was not radically bad. But he was wretchedly weak of will to reject an opportunity of having another drink with the boys--or with the girls--or with anybody or with nobody. In the days of his ascendancy, when he was a young and newly married architect, he was a buyer of drinks for others. Waiters in cafés vied with each other in showing readiness to take his orders. He was rated a jolly good fellow then. No one would have supposed it destined that some fine night a leering barroom wit should reply to his whispered application for a small loan by pouring a half-glass of whiskey upon his head and saying: “I hereby christen thee 'Busted.'” The title stuck. Blake, through continued impecuniosity, lost all shame of it in time; lost, too, his self-respect and his wife. Mrs. Blake, a gentle and pretty little brunette, had wedded him against the will of her parents. She had trusted, for his safety, to the allurements of his future, which everybody said was bright, and to his love for her. The years of tearful nights, the pleadings, the reproaches, the seesaw of hope and despair, need not here be dwelt upon. They would make an old story, and some of the details might be shocking to the young person. They reached a culmination one day when she said to him: “You love drink better than you love me. I have done with you.” She was a woman and took a woman's view of the case. When he came back to their rooms that night, she was not there. Then he knew how much he loved her and how much he had underestimated his love. She did not go to her parents. There was a very musty proverb that she knew would meet her on the threshold. “You made your bed, now lie on it.” Her father was a man of no originality, hence he would have put it in that way. She got employment in a photograph gallery, where she made herself useful by being ornamental, sitting behind a desk in the anteroom.