“I can not tell you why God made me live after all my tribulations. I longed for death, but it did not come, and I dared not hurl myself out of existence, having been raised by a Christian mother. So I lived, though weary of life, and in the struggle for existence I became an actress, having always possessed talents for the stage, and finding in its arduous work relief from the pangs of memory. “This is, in brief, my story, and it will show you in part why Cinthia Dawn is so dear to me. Although her beauty and sweetness are most attractive, still it is not those alone that draw her to my heart. It is because of her orphanage and sorrow, for Everard Dawn, from some cause, does not give her a real fatherly love, and she is lonely at heart beyond expression.” “Poor, poor Cinthia!” he breathed, with deep emotion. She dried her tearful eyes, and continued, with a searching glance at his perturbed face: “Perhaps you would like to hear under what circumstances I first met Cinthia?” He replied very readily: “Yes.” “It seemed like chance at first, but ever since I have thought that Providence itself sent me to the poor girl’s aid in that hour. It was in Washington, on the morning of your interrupted marriage, when she was waiting for her father to come and take her home. I had been a guest of the hotel the night before, and on removing to one nearer the theater, I found I had left two handsome rings. I returned for them, and met Cinthia just leaving her room to go upon the street, a reckless, desperate girl, maddened by misery and humiliation, her head filled with insane ideas of suicide, of going on the stage, of anything to escape from herself and her despair. I drew her back, my heart full of love and pity, and in an hour we changed from strangers to loving friends. I put new hope in her heart, or at least courage to bear the ills she could not cure, so that when her father came for her she went with him readily to the new future he had planned by the aid of a little fortune that had suddenly fallen to her from some distant relative.” “You saved her from herself and from the keenest pangs of the sorrow I had unwittingly brought upon her by my enforced renunciation of our betrothal. God forever bless you, noble woman!” cried Arthur, crushing her hand in his in the exuberance of his gratitude, and adding, warmly: “You wondered why you could not die when bereaved of all that made life worth living; but do you not see that Heaven spared you to be an angel of mercy to this young girl?” He was tempted to confide his own story to her ears, that she might not blame him so bitterly for Cinthia’s grief, but prudence intervened, whispering that it were wiser to keep the cruel secret. CHAPTER XXXII. “A COLD, GRAY LIFE.” Arthur Varian and his mother were the closest and dearest friends, and since his elopement, that had ended so unhappily, he had never kept a secret from her, believing that she was his best adviser.