In this conviction, her offending seemed to her enormous, unending. From the day of her arrival in New York until now, she felt that she had never been anything but selfish, cruel, mercenary and calculating. No! Certainly she had not scrupled to use men ... and what men she had known, had availed herself of, climbed above, and discarded. Now the smoke wreaths of her progress swirled more rapidly, thickly revolving, mounting more slowly. She had found her dinners in humble restaurants, paid for in half-dollars by young men already pinched in the struggle of salaries, young men in whom that spark of hope of which Harrigan Blood had spoken burned heedlessly--dreaming a miraculous future and the winning of another Helen. Next it was the coarse world of the theater and the restaurants--heavy sated types of men, demanding their brutal pay, men who disgusted her, with whom she could not share the same air, dangerous antagonists. Another swirl, another chance opportunity, and she was out of the contagion, unscotched, meeting at last men of good manners, gentlemen in name and often in heart. What an incredible progress it had been! She saw few faces distinctly, but in the covetous, brutal, chivalrous, or adoring crowd she remembered here and there a look, a word, something that had struck her by its ridicule, by its cruelty, or inclined her to a sudden gentleness. She, too--how she had changed through all this! How ridiculous had been her early admirations, how childish her ambitions! What a change had come within--an education of all her tastes, a desire for the beautiful, a longing for refinement, a need of distinction to respond to her abiding sense of delicacy. Yes; to acquire all this she had done much harm, inflicted useless pain on many. But now retribution had come, inexorable. That she had never thought of--that she too could suffer. And she did suffer, abjectly, hopelessly, sitting there pressed against the window-frame, staring at the unseen wall across which the figures of the past went swirling down in long revolving spirals, like the slow undulating swirls of smoke. There was no way out. She would never see him again--he would never seek her. She was accursed, punished for all past wickedness, singled out for tragedy by fate. What now could become of her. What could she fall back on? Who could help her? She was horribly alone--and afraid. * * * * * That night she dreamed a terrible dream. She was dining at Tenafly's in the midst of a great company. Massingale was there. By some strange turn, Mrs. Massingale did not exist; instead, it seemed to her that he was bending over her saying: "It's all a mistake. I'm not married; I've never been married. That was my brother's wife. You are to be Mrs. Massingale. Do you understand? That's why every one is here!"