where I had been from the first. I
began to feel that strangers who had followed me into the store by
chance were there by design to spy upon me. My own furtive glances were
enough to excite suspicion. My more frequent purchases were enough to
confirm them. At last one day I read in the eyes of the clerk who waited
on me the question which must have been in his mind. I seized my package
and rushed out onto the street, knowing that I would never dare return.

I went then from one place to another in shrinking fear of detection. In
each one my experience was repeated until I believe I began to wear the
air of a hunted creature.

So suspicious were my actions that at last a drug clerk shook my little
worn-out slip of paper against the glass perfume case and scowled at
me.

"The last half of the doctor's name is torn off," he said insolently.
"Where did you get this?"

I could not speak.

"I'm sorry," he snarled. "We don't sell that under these circumstances.
Where do you live, madam?"

I hurried out into the street.

There I noticed that a tall young man, who had been staring at me, with
a row of gold teeth accenting a diabolical smile, had followed me from
the store. After I had walked half a block to find my carriage, he spoke
to me.

"I can sell you something just as good," he whispered by my side. "I do
a little quiet business in it. It's not for yourself, is it?"

"No," I said, trembling from head to foot. "It is for an unfortunate
woman, whose name must not be disclosed."

"Call her She," he suggested with a leer. "Here is an address. Send a
messenger boy whenever you like. Every one thinks I am a perfume
manufacturer."

This was the opening of greater comfort to me; my terror of detection
was lessened. As time passed I found that my moral sense was being
dulled, little by little. I was fulfilling my destiny. I was living
according to my arrangement of brain cells. In spite of his warning--or
perhaps solely because of it--the fears of my foster father were
realized. I was I!

Four weeks ago came a new thing. It burst like dynamite. It gripped my
heart. It felt along the chords of my womanhood. I could not escape its
presence. It cried to me in the darkness. It walked beside me in the
sunlight.

CHAPTER II

THIS NEW THING

It has been hard for me to tell coldly of my first weakness; it will be
harder still for me to write of what