Still inexorable thought worked in my brain, and forced me to consider my position. Was she,--was Sibyl--more to blame than I myself for all the strange havoc wrought? I had married her of my own free will and choice,--and she had told me beforehand--"I am a contaminated creature, trained to perfection in the lax morals and prurient literature of my day." Well,--and so it had proved! My own blood burned with shame as I reflected how ample and convincing were the proofs!--and, starting up from my recumbent posture I paced up and down again restlessly in a fever of self-contempt and disgust. What could I do with a woman such as she to whom I was now bound for life? Reform her? She would laugh me to scorn for the attempt. Reform myself? She would sneer at me for an effeminate milksop. Besides, was not I as willing to be degraded as she was to degrade me?--a very victim to my brute passions? Tortured and maddened by my feelings I roamed about wildly, and started as if a pistol-shot had been fired near me when the plash of oars sounded on the silence and the keel of a small boat grated on the shore, the boatman within it respectfully begging me in mellifluous French to employ him for an hour. I assented, and in a minute or two was out on the lake in the middle of the red glow of sunset which turned the snow-summits to points of flame, and the waters to the hue of ruby wine. I think the man who rowed me saw that I was in no very pleasant humour, for he preserved a discreet silence,--and I, pulling my hat partly over my eyes, lay back in the stern, still busy with my wretched musings. Only a month married!--and yet,--a sickening satiety had taken the place of the so-called 'deathless' lover's passion. There were moments even, when my wife's matchless physical beauty appeared hideous to me. I knew her as she was,--and no exterior charm could ever again cover for me the revolting nature within. And what puzzled me from dawn to dusk was her polished, specious hypocrisy,--her amazing aptitude for lies! To look at her,--to hear her speak,--one would have deemed her a very saint of purity,--a delicate creature whom a coarse word would startle and offend,--a very incarnation of the sweetest and most gracious womanhood,--all heart and feeling and sympathy. Everyone thought thus of her,--and never was there a greater error. Heart she had none; that fact was borne in upon me two days after our marriage while we were in Paris, for there a telegram reached us announcing her mother's death. The paralysed Countess of Elton had, it appeared, expired suddenly on our wedding-day, or rather our wedding night,--but the Earl had deemed it best to wait forty-eight hours before interrupting our hymeneal happiness with the melancholy tidings. He followed his telegram by a brief letter to his daughter, in which the concluding lines were these--"As you are a bride and are travelling abroad, I should advise you by no means to go into mourning. Under the circumstances it is