"Pardon me; but I have a word to say. Your career will probably be brilliantly successful, in which event you will feel no want of admirers and friends,--and will doubtless ignore me for those who flatter you more, and really love you less. But, Salome, failure may overtake you, bringing in its train countless evils that at present you can not realize,--poverty, disease, desolation, in the midst of strangers,--and all the woes that, like hungry wolves, attack homeless, isolated women. I earnestly hope that the leprous hand of disaster and defeat may never be laid upon your future, but the most cautious human schemes are fallible--often futile--and if you should be unsuccessful in your programme, and find yourself unable to consummate your plans, I ask you now, by the memory of our friendship, by the sacred memory of the dead, to promise me that you will immediately write and acquaint me with all your needs, your wishes, your real condition. Promise me, dear Salome, that you will turn instantly to me, as you would to Stanley, were he in my place,--that you will let me prove myself your elder brother,--your truest, best friend." He put his hand on her head, but she recoiled haughtily from his touch. "Dr. Grey, I promise you, 'I will not soil thy purple with my dust, Nor breathe my poison on thy Venice-glass.' I promise you that if misfortune, failure, and penury lay hold of me, you shall be the last human being who will learn it; for I will cloak myself under a name that will not betray me, and crawl into some lazaretto, and be buried in some potter's field, among other mendicants,--unknown, 'unwept, unhonored, and unsung.'" If some motherless young chamois, rescued from destruction, and pampered and caressed, had suddenly turned, and savagely bitten and lacerated the hand that fondled and fed it, Dr. Grey would not have been more painfully startled; but experience had taught him the uselessness of expostulation during her moods of perversity, and he took his hat and turned away, saying, almost sternly,-- "Bear in mind that neither palace nor potter's field can screen you from the scrutiny of your Maker, or mask and shelter your shivering soul in the solemn hour when He demands its last reckoning." "Which 'reckoning,' your eminently Christian charity assures you will prove more terrible for me than the Bloody Assizes. 'By the memory of our friendship!' Oh, shallow sham! Pinning my faith to the _dictum_, 'The tide of friendship does not rise high on the bank of perfection,' my fatuity led me to expect that your friendship was wide as the universe, and lasting as eternity. Wise Helvetius told me that, 'To be loved, we should merit but little esteem; all superiority attracts awe and aversion;' _ergo_, since my credentials of unworthiness were indisputable, I laid claim to a vast share of your favor. But, alas! the logic of the seers is well-nigh as hollow as my hopes."