bre to make her see the impossibility of
continuing to live this irregular, vicious kind of existence. Women of
Elfie St. Clair's type could do it, because they had no innate
refinement of feeling, but she could not, and, in her saner moments,
when she thought of what she had lost, when she remembered how she had
been regenerated, purified, by her disinterested love for a good man,
she looked wistfully back on those weeks at Mrs. Farley's
boarding-house. Her attic, miserable as it was, was a haven of
happiness and respectability compared with her present degradation.

Then, again, she had an uncomfortable idea that there was an accounting
still to be made. In her sleep she saw John Madison approaching, stern,
terrible, exacting some awful penalty, like an implacable judge. She
had a premonition of an approaching catastrophe, a feeling, vague but
nevertheless palpable, that something was going to happen. The idea
obsessed her, haunted her; she could not shake it off. She became
nervous of her own shadow. Gradually, too, she grew to dislike
Brockton. Instead of feeling gratitude for all the luxuries he gave
her, she blamed him for having made her what she was. She classed him
as the type of man who preys on woman's virtue and exults in the number
of souls he is able to destroy. She looked upon him as responsible for
all her troubles, for her degradation and sacrifice of her womanhood.
He was the eternal enemy of her sex, the arch tempter, the anti-christ.
Her mind became obsessed with this idea, and a savage, unreasoning hate
for him and all his kind sprang up in her heart.

Meantime, things pursued the even tenor of their way, at least
outwardly. Brockton was careless, indifferent, good natured as usual.
Laura was seemingly as gay and carefree as ever. None saw the ripples
on the apparently serene surface, except, perhaps, one pair of black
eyes which, always spying, never missed anything. Annie guessed her
mistress' thoughts, but was shrewd enough to hold her tongue. The
negress, promoted from the rank of maid of all work at Mrs. Farley's
establishment, had been elevated to the dignity of lady's maid. Laura
never liked the negress, but well aware of the difficulty she might
have in finding a servant, she accepted her voluntary offer to follow
when she went with Brockton. The woman knew her ways, and in some
respects was a good servant--at least as faithful and honest as any she
could expect to get, which was not, of co