"Perhaps it is because he knows you are unlike the ordinary run of women and have nothing in common with their usual trumpery aims. Of course he is always courteous to our sex,--but I think it is easy to see that his courtesy is often worn as a mere mask to cover a very different feeling." "You have perceived that, then, Sibyl?" I said with a slight smile. "I should be blind if I had not perceived it"--she replied; "I do not however blame him for his pet aversion,--I think it makes him all the more attractive and interesting." "He is a great friend of yours?" inquired Mavis, looking at me as she put the question. "The very greatest friend I have,"--I replied quickly--"I owe him more than I can ever repay,--indeed I have to thank him even for introducing me to my wife!" I said the words unthinkingly and playfully, but as I uttered them, a sudden shock affected my nerves,--a shock of painful memory. Yes, it was true!--I owed to him, to Lucio, the misery, fear, degradation and shame of having such a woman as Sibyl was, united to me till death should us part. I felt myself turning sick and giddy,--and I sat down in one of the quaint oak chairs that helped to furnish Mavis Clare's study, allowing the two women to pass out of the open French window into the sunlit garden together, the dogs following at their heels. I watched them as they went,--my wife, tall and stately, attired in the newest and most fashionable mode,--Mavis, small and slight, with her soft white gown and floating waist-ribbon,--the one sensual, the other spiritual,--the one base and vicious in desire,--the other pure-souled and aspiring to noblest ends,--the one, a physically magnificent animal,--the other merely sweet-faced and ideally fair like a sylph of the woodlands,--and looking, I clenched my hands as I thought with bitterness of spirit what a mistaken choice I had made. In the profound egotism which had always been part of my nature I now actually allowed myself to believe that I might, had I chosen, have wedded Mavis Clare,--never for one moment imagining that all my wealth would have been useless to me in such a quest, and that I might as well have proposed to pluck a star from the sky as to win a woman who was able to read my nature thoroughly, and who would never have come down to my money-level from her intellectual throne,--no, not though I had been a monarch of many nations. I stared at the large tranquil features of the Pallas Athene,--and the blank eyeballs of the marble goddess appeared to regard me in turn with impassive scorn. I glanced round the room, and at the walls adorned with the wise sayings of poets and philosophers,--sayings that reminded me of truths which I knew, yet never accepted as practicable; and presently my eyes were attracted to a corner near the writing-desk which I had not noticed before, where there was a small dim lamp burning. Above this lamp an ivory crucifix gleamed