times. Once or twice she came in while I was there.
Then she did not come any more. He must have told her, of course. He
kept looking at the door, though, as if he expected her at any moment.
But she never came again in those days. I could not bear it--his trying
to talk to me, and evidently wishing all the time that she would come. I
gave up going altogether at last. What could I do? It was unbearable. It
was more than flesh and blood could stand."

"I do not wonder that you hate her," said Griggs. "I have often thought
you did."

Gloria smiled sadly.

"Yes," she answered. "I hate her with all my heart. She has robbed me of
the only thing I ever had worth having--if I ever had it. I sometimes
wonder--or rather, no. I do not wonder, for I know the truth well
enough. I have been over and over it again and again in the night. He
never loved me. He never could love any one but her. He knew her long
ago, and has loved her all his life. Why should he put me in her place?
He admired me. I was a beautiful plaything--no, not beautiful--" She
paused.

"You are the most beautiful woman in the world," said Paul Griggs, with
deep conviction.

He saw the blush of pleasure in her face, saw the fluttering of the
lids. But he neither knew that she had meant him to say it, nor did he
judge of the vast gulf her mind must have instantaneously bridged, from
the outpouring of her fancied injuries and of her hatred for Francesca
Campodonico, to the unconcealable satisfaction his words gave her.

"I have heard him say that, too," she answered a moment later. "But he
did not mean it. He never meant anything he said to me--not one word of
it all. You do not know what that means," she went on, working herself
back into a sort of despairing anger again. "You do not know. To have
built one's whole life on one thing, as I did! To have believed only one
thing, as I did! To find that it is all gone, all untrue, all a wretched
piece of acting--oh, you do not know! That woman's face haunts me in the
dark--she is always there, with him, wherever I look, as they are
together now at her house. Do you understand? Do you know what I feel?
You pity me--but do you know? Oh, I have longed for some one--I have
wished I had a dog to listen to me--sometimes--it is so hard to be
alone--so very hard--"

She broke off suddenly and hid her face again.

"You are not alone. You have me--if you will have me."

Before he had finished speaking the few words, th