surprised me altogether.

"Jasper," she asked, with something of a smile, "do you remember when I
was married?"

"Remember it!" cried I; and I am sure she must have seen the blood rush
up to my face. "Why, of course, I remember it! How should a man forget
a thing like that?"

"Yes," she went on, and neither looked at the other now, "I was a girl
then, and all the world was my playground. Every day was a flower to
pick; the night was music and laughter. How I used to people the world
my hopes created--such romantic figures they were, such nonsense! When
Edmond Czerny met me at Nice, I think he understood me. Oh, the castles
we built in the air, the romantic heights we scaled, the passionate
folly with which we deceived ourselves! 'The world is for you and I,'
he said, 'in each other's hearts'; and I, Jasper, believed him, just
because I had not learnt to be a woman. His own story fascinated me; I
cannot tell how much. He had been in all countries; he knew many
cities; he could talk as no man I had ever met. Perhaps, if he had not
been so clever, it would have been different. All the other men I knew,
all except one, perhaps----!"

"There was one, then," said I, and my meaning she could not mistake.

But she turned her face from me and would not name the man.

"Yes," she went on, without noticing it, "there was one; but I was a
child and did not understand. The others did not interest me. Their
king was a cook; their temple the Casino. And then Edmond spoke of his
island home; I was to be the mistress of it, and we were to be apart
from all the world there. I did not ask him, as others might have asked
him, 'What has your life been? Why do you love me?' I was glad to
escape from it all, that little world of chatter and unreality, and I
said, 'I will be your wife.' We left Europe together and went first to
San Francisco. Life was still in a garden of roses. If I would awake
sometimes to ask myself a question, I could not answer it. I was the
child of romance, but my world was empty. Then one day we came to Ken's
Island, and I saw all its wonders, and I said, 'Yes, we will visit here
every year and dream that it is our kingdom.' I did not know the truth;
what woman would have guessed it?"

"You learnt it, Miss Ruth, nevertheless," said I, for her story was
just what I myself had imagined it to be. "You were not long on Ken's
Island before you knew the truth."

"A month," she said, quietly. "I was a month here, and