"You were right about me, partly--and partly wrong. I don't think I can make you understand. I've always wanted so much from life--so much more than it seemed possible to have. The only thing for a girl in my position and circumstances was to make what is called a good marriage. I wanted what that would bring, too. I was torn between the desires--or rather the natural instincts and the trained desires. I had ideals about loving and being loved, and I had the material ideals of my experience in this world out here. "I was untrue to each by turns. Here--I want to show you something." She took up a book with closely written pages. "I came here to-night--I won't conceal from you that I thought of you when I came. It was my last time here, and you had gone, I supposed. Among other things I had out this old diary to burn, and I had found this, written on my eighteenth birthday, when I came out--the fond, romantic, secret ideal of a foolish girl--listen: "The Soul of Love wed the Soul of Truth and their daughter, Joy, was born: who was immortal and in whom they lived for ever!' "You see--that was the sort of moonshine I started in to live. Two or three times I was a grievous disappointment to my people, and once or twice, perhaps, I was disappointed myself. I was never quite sure what I wanted. But if you think I was consistently mercenary you are mistaken. I shall tell you something more--something no one knows. There was a man I met while that ideal was still strong and beautiful to me--but after I'd come to see that here, in this life, it was not easily to be kept. He was older than I, experienced with women--a lover of women, I came to understand in time. I was a novelty to him, a fresh recreation--he enjoyed all those romantic ideals of mine. I thought then he loved me, and I worshipped him. He was married, but constantly said he was about to leave his wife, so she would divorce him. I promised to come to him when it was done. He had married for money and he would have been poor again. I didn't mind in the least. I tell you this to show you that I could have loved a poor man, not only well enough to marry him, but to break with the traditions, and brave the scandal of going to him in that common way. With all I felt for him I should have been more than satisfied. But I came in time to see that he was not as earnest as I had been. He wasn't capable of feeling what I felt. He was more cowardly than I--or rather, I was more reckless than he. I suspected it a long time; I became convinced of it a year ago and a little over. He became hateful to me. I had wasted my love. Then he became funny. But--you see--I am not altogether what you believed me. Wait a bit longer, please.