not half so profitable as the one you taught me that of throwing every thought and faculty, every energy and hope into the unfathomable gulf of a professing woman's love.' Did I profess to love you ?

No, you only made me think you professed it.'

Did I even do that?' she asked.

God knows, I cannot say! The upshot of the matter is, we have been as two gamesters playing for a great stake; but I did not know you played with false dice; and so, now that I have lost all I played for, you need not wonder if I am sore and complain.'

She was about to rise, but his look restrained her. There was something terrible in his face. Her own face changed as she saw his, her eyes dropped, and for the moment she felt as though all her senses-kept so long on the rack—were about to leave her.

He on his side saw, and had seen the passionate resentment slowly gathering in her heart; and he had consciously fed it, yet not without a certain quickening sense in his blood of the perilousness of the process, which presently assumed the mastery, and impelled him to change his manner and tone, which became full of an inexpressible tenderness and melancholy, and made the tears for the first time rush to Mrs. Rhys's eyes, as she sat with averted face listening to him.

You asked me, I think, why I brought you here. I do not know whether I can tell you, without much more talk of myself than I find it agreeable to contemplate. Let me own, however, I am not the brute I have seemed. I did not bring you here to punish you for giving me some gleams of happiness, some fancies and hopes of so winning a nature, that, even now that I understand their hollowness, I am fool enough to wish, like a child, that they might all again return to me, to mock me once more. Do you know what I was when we first met ? But I am mad to ask the question. A pure heart and soul like yours-'

An agitated voice interrupted him

'Do not say anything like that again to me. ment is greater than I can bear.'

The punish

'You would I suppose refuse to believe me if I told you, as I do now, with a calm voice, in quiet and deliberate words, and speaking, I hope, with entire possession of my sanity, as yet at least, that it is because you are so pure, so sweet, so

intrinsically good, that I compare you with the mass of your fellow-women, and wonder no longer at my own love and worship, or, if you will, at my own infatuation. I have found but one bit of solid ground, one real, true, beautiful, divine thing, one influence of good springing up, I scarce know how, into wondrously productive activity. But this is all mere words -words; what shall I say of it that can even distantly shadow forth its miraculous powers; what but this, it transformed even me? Call it by what name you please, but do not deny that we have known love. Catherine Rhys, look on me-here, grovelling at your feet, and believe what I say, that even if you desert me, still it behoves you to let me know henceforward I have known one true woman, have had the grace to love her, and in my heart-felt devotion to her, have thus some claim to be satisfied, that I too am not utterly beyond redemption. The worst has come and must be endured, I know that—yes, I know it-we cannot undo what is done, then let us draw out of it whatever of benefit we can. You love me, Catherine, or you have bitterly deceived me. You have known what has been passing within my heart for many months-you will not deny that?

'No-you know that I cannot-and you ask it to make me hate myself still more than I do already,' Mrs. Rhys answered bitterly.

"No-only to make you do me one last act of justice, Catherine.'

'Justice! we have both forgotten it towards ourselves and towards-him. What justice can I do you, Mr. Cunliff? ' 'Tell me that this very misery with which I go away is not come of an empty dream-a mockery-tell me you have loved me. We have been so silent in our hours of happiness. We have felt ourselves so wise in reading each other's thoughts. I may have been misled, or may fancy I have. Don't think it will weaken me to have the sweetness of the truth as well as the bitterness. Since I go, Catherine, give me the words that staying I might never have asked for, and I will go with such terrible contentment as is alone possible for me, if only I might bear with me the unchallenged possession of my one jewel, my sweet amulet, my precious talisman, my only-only earthly possession that I can care for, and gloat over, and draw light and comfort from, in the dreary awful years to

come. Catherine, you know what that is the knowledge of your love.'

Cunliff, you press me hardly, inconsiderately, cruelly. I think of another beside you. I must think of him—will think of him. He deserves all I can give him—and shall have it.' 'Ay-curse him! No-do not be angry. Doubt not I curse myself with infinitely keener tongue.'

Again she essayed to rise, and again he detained her, but with so much of pleading, passionate entreaty, that she once more yielded with the murmur

Cunliff, see how the evening darkens. It is impossible I can stay many minutes longer.'

'What! give him all-all-for evermore-and deny me even these bitter moments which I see you are resolved shall leave no other taste behind. Ah, you are indeed heartless.'

She looked down at him as she echoed his word in tones of bitter reproach, then suddenly-so suddenly that he was shocked into forgetting himself in alarm for her—she burst into tears; and in that moment of weakness and uncontrollable childlike passion of grief, she sobbed out his name with so much tenderness that the instant after she drew in her breath, and stood as if aghast at the revelation she felt she had made.

A secret thrill of joy ran through his veins--even beneath all the unquestionable agony and conflict of John Cunliff's soul-and shook his whole frame. But with the lover's instinctive cunning, which is never more true, inventive, or daring, than when love is in the highest state of spiritual exaltation, he remained silent, as if finding naught that he desired in her passionate invocation. The trick was only too successful. As she saw him despondent at her feet, she could not but feel steal over her-in vivid succession-the remembrances of their first meeting, and the gradual and unsuspected growth of their attachment; favoured as it had been by the general habits of society, and of the people among whom they had been thrown.

And though it was no longer with secret delight she nourished her many remembrances of that time of illusionthough she had no longer pleasure or satisfaction in marking the almost daily processes of change-still, as Cunliff lay there, prostrate, and the consequences were brought home so vividly—she could not help letting her thoughts run back

even were it only in wonder-or with the hope to draw some comfort out of them for him.

She saw how they had dallied with talk which rarely failed to bring the blood into her cheek. How they had exchanged opinions, and always with the same result; that the opinions insensibly passed away and were forgotten, while leaving something behind too sweet and mysterious to be prudently looked into. She remembered their few but coverted solitary walks together, where even the commonest acts of courtesy insensibly assumed a strange and attractive meaning; their half-accidental, half-managed visits to the same country house, or the same London drawing-rooms, at the same time; where each of the hypocrites of love played the same well-acted part of glad surprise at the unexpectedness of the meeting—she from the woman's instinct of safety, he to cover her design while feeling he thus strengthened the claims he might one day urge.

She saw all this now with changed eyes, and would have given some of the best drops of her heart's blood to wipe away from her soul the stains such a career left there.

But she saw also, with almost a new sense, how strong and irresistible a love had grown up under those evil conditions. How her present scorn of the conditions, and of the miserableness of the whole array of temptations, proved the strength and reality of the love.

And so step by step she was driven back to look into herself-to note what a creature of impulse she had been-what a plaything every one had made of her from her earliest yearsspoiled by her parents at home, her teachers at school, and most of all by her husband, who saw in her a beautiful idol, and treated it as if half of his own creation.

Then again, when she had gone forth into society, what new and fascinating changes were rung on sweet-sounding bells to the same old theme, her gracious goodness in consenting simply to look and to be; when she became the especial pet of fashion; the favourite object of court by hosts and hostesses who wished to invest their dreary dinner-tables with a new charm; the day-dream of young men for her beauty, talent, and fascination; who fluttered numerously about her and made her the constant centre of a most brilliant circle.

And had Catherine Rhys been no more than she thus saw in herself her career would doubtless have been that of a

thousand others-the career of a woman who has no inconvenient scruples against any kind of enjoyment, provided only all be done with due outward decorum and respectability.

Catherine had soon found herself to be quite another woman, when her strong though undeveloped passions and affections began to be called forth by a new influence. Looking back at herself, she seemed now for the first time to understand herself, and could not resist the fascination of collecting together, as into one focus, all the scattered traits under the new light. She had always been kind-hearted, and rarely thoughtful in her kindness; pure in feeling and desire, but with no fixed basis of religious or moral principle; worthy of admiration for her many real and charming qualities, but spoiling all by the practical habit of dissociating cause and effect; and demanding worship for herself, whatever that self might choose to be, in any moods, however wilful and fantastic.

And if all these things are changed, and for the better, how can the heart of the woman but acknowledge the author of the change? How refuse to him what he asks, as his sole repayment? She turns her brimming eyes full upon him, takes his hand, kisses it, and then says to him—

'Did you not know in fact, beyond all possibility of honest. denial on my part, the true state of things with me, no power should now draw it from me.'

'No!' she added, with uplifted eyes, and with the smile of a martyr at the stake, at the moment she feels she is about to triumph and make the eager soul resist and keep down the shrinking and coward body-with a smile like this on her face, even while the big drops were falling heavily on his hand, 'No-God, who sees into my heart, may best judge me-but I think I could keep my secret in spite of you, John Cunliff, had I any secret the keeping of which was humanly possible. But as it is not-I can but own to you that I am not ungrateful; that if I am in any way less frivolous than I was, less heartless, less inclined to see all creation as a kind of magnified image of myself-but rather to ask why, amid so sad and yet so sweet a world, where there is so much good to be donewhy I, so pitiful and useless a being, exist-it is to you I owe the change. Aye, wonderful as it may sound, it is you who would have led me away from God, who have carried me, and are now carrying me nearer to Him! Dear friend, if you wish then to hear the truth-which can only shame me by its exis