the moment as the fall of a favorite. But that's
nothing--it's nothing at all compared with the danger to yourself. I
didn't sleep last night thinking of it. Yet I'm glad you wrote me; it gave
me time to think, and I can tell you the truth as I see it. Haven't you
thought that he will drag you down, down, down, wear out your soul, break
and sicken your life, destroy your beauty--you are beautiful, my dear,
beyond what the world sees, even. Give it up--ah, give it up, and don't
break our hearts! There are too many people loving you for you to
sacrifice them--and yourself, too.... You've had such a good time!"

"It's been like a dream," she interrupted, in a far-away voice--"like a
dream, these two years."

"And it's been such a good dream," he urged; "and you will only go to a
bad one, from which you will never wake. The thing has fastened on him; he
will never give it up. And penniless, too--his father has cast him off. My
girl, it's impossible. Listen to me. There's no one on earth that would do
more for you than I would--no one."

"Dear, dear friend!" she cried, with a sudden impulse, and caught his hand
in hers and kissed it before he could draw it back. "You are so true, and
you think you are right. But, but"--her eyes took on a deep, steady,
far-away look--"but I will save him; and we shall not be penniless in the
end. Meanwhile I have seven hundred dollars a year of my own. No one can
touch that. Nothing can change me now--and I have promised."

When he saw her fixed determination, he made no further protest, but asked
that he might help her, be with her the next day, when she was to take a
step which the wise world would say must lead to sorrow and a miserable
end.

The step she took was to marry Jim Templeton, the drunken, cast-off son of
a millionaire senator from Kentucky, who controlled railways and owned a
bank, and had so resented his son's inebriate habits that for five years
he had never permitted Jim's name to be mentioned in his presence. Jim had
had twenty thousand dollars left him by his mother, and a small income of
three hundred dollars from an investment which had been made for him when
a little boy. And this had carried him on; for, drunken as he was, he had
sense enough to eke out the money, limiting himself to three thousand
dollars a year. He had four thousand dollars left, and his tiny income of
three hundred, when he went to Sally Seabrook, after having been sober for
a month, and begged