Her name was Alicia Warlock. She had been born and bred a lady. She had lost her station, her character, and her friends. Virtue shuddered at the sight of her; and Vice had got her for the rest of her days. Shocking and common, as I told you. It made no difference to _me_. I have said it already--I say it again--I was a man bewitched. Is there anything so very wonderful in that? Just remember who I was. Among the honest women in my own station in life, where could I have found the like of _her_? Could _they_ walk as she walked? and look as she looked? When _they_ gave me a kiss, did their lips linger over it as hers did? Had _they_ her skin, her laugh, her foot, her hand, her touch? _She_ never had a speck of dirt on her: I tell you her flesh was a perfume. When she embraced me, her arms folded round me like the wings of angels; and her smile covered me softly with its light like the sun in heaven. I leave you to laugh at me, or to cry over me, just as your temper may incline. I am not trying to excuse myself--I am trying to explain. You are gentle-folks; what dazzled and maddened _me_, is everyday experience to _you_. Fallen or not, angel or devil, it came to this--she was a lady; and I was a groom. Before the house was astir, I got her away (by the workmen's train) to a large manufacturing town in our parts. Here--with my savings in money to help her--she could get her outfit of decent clothes and her lodging among strangers who asked no questions so long as they were paid. Here--now on one pretense and now on another--I could visit her, and we could both plan together what our future lives were to be. I need not tell you that I stood pledged to make her my wife. A man in my station always marries a woman of her sort. Do you wonder if I was happy at this time? I should have been perfectly happy but for one little drawback. It was this: I was never quite at my ease in the presence of my promised wife. I don't mean that I was shy with her, or suspicious of her, or ashamed of her. The uneasiness I am speaking of was caused by a faint doubt in my mind whether I had not seen her somewhere, before the morning when we met at the doctor's house. Over and over again, I found myself wondering whether her face did not remind me of some other face--_what_ other I never could tell. This strange feeling, this one question that could never be answered, vexed me to a degree that you would hardly credit. It came between us at the strangest times--oftenest, however, at night, when the candles were lit. You have known what it is to try and remember a forgotten name--and to fail, search as you may, to find it in your mind. That was my case. I failed to find my lost face, just as you failed to find your lost name.