while she cleared her mind.

"Of course, you despise me. I despise myself--I mean, the self that was
me before I turned from a woman into an actress. But it's the truth: I
have no longer any real capacity for emotion, merely an infinite
capacity for appreciation of the artistic delineation of emotion, true
or feigned. That ... that is why, when you showed me you had grown to
love me so, I responded so quickly. You _were_ in love--more honestly
than I had ever seen love revealed. It touched me. I was proud to have
inspired such a love. I wanted, for the time being, to have you with me
always, that I might always study the wonderful, the beautiful
manifestations of your love. Why, Hugh, you even managed to make me
believe I was worth it--that my response was sufficient repayment for
your adoration...."

He said nothing. She glanced furtively at him and continued:

"I meant to be sweet and faithful when I left that note for you on the
yacht, Hugh; I was grateful, and I meant to be generous.... But when I
went to the Waldorf, the first person I met was Max. Of course I had to
tell him what had happened. And then he threw himself upon my
compassion. It seems that losing me had put him in the most terrible
trouble about money. He was short, and he couldn't get the backing he
needed without me, his call upon my services, by way of assurance to his
backers. And I began to think. I knew I didn't love you honestly, Hugh,
and that life with you would be a living lie. What right had I to
deceive you that way, just to gratify my love of being loved? And
especially if by doing that I ruined Max, the man to whom, next to you,
I owed everything? I couldn't do it. But I took time to think it
over--truly I did. I really did go to a sanatorium, and rested there
while I turned the whole matter over carefully in my mind, and at length
reached my decision to stick by Max and let you go, free to win the
heart of a woman worthy of you."

She paused again, but still he was mute and immobile.

"So now you know me--what I am. No other man has ever known or ever
will. But I had to tell you the truth. It seems that the only thing my
career had left uncalloused was my fundamental sense of honesty. So I
had to come and tell you."

And still he held silence, attentive, but with a set face that betrayed
nothing of the tenor of his thoughts.

Almost timidly, with nervously fumbling fingers, she extracted from her
pocket-book a small ticket env