, Gerald," said Isabel Stewart, coldly;
"at least, I could offer no suggestion regarding such a matter as
that. I can only live out my own life as my heart and judgment of what
is right and wrong approve; but if you have no scruples on that
score--if you desire to institute proceedings for a divorce, in order
to repair, as far as may be, the wrong you have also done Anna
Correlli--I shall lay no obstacle in your way."

She arose as she ceased speaking, thus intimating that she desired the
interview to terminate.

"And that is all you have to say to me? Oh, Isabel!" Gerald Goddard
gasped, and realizing how regally beautiful she had become, how
infinitely superior, physically and morally, spiritually and
intellectually, she was to the woman for whose sake he had trampled
her in the dust. And the fact was forced upon him that she was one to
be worshiped for her sweet graciousness and purity of character--to be
reverenced for her innate nobility and stanch adherence to principle,
and to be exultantly proud of, could he have had the right to be--as a
queen among women.

"That is all," she replied, with slow thoughtfulness, "unless, as a
woman who is deeply interested in the moral advancement of humanity in
general, I urge you once more to make your future better than your
past has been, that thus the world may be benefited, in ever so slight
a measure, because you have lived. As for you and me, our ways part
here, never to cross again, I trust; for, while I have ceased to
grieve over the blighted hopes of my youth, it would be painful to be
reminded of my early mistakes."

"Part--forever? I do not feel that I can have it so," said Gerald
Goddard, with white lips, "for--I love you at this moment a thousand
times more than I ever--"

"Stop!" Isabel Stewart firmly commanded. "Such an avowal from you at
this time is but an added insult to me, as well as a cowardly wrong
against her who, in the eyes of the world, at least, has sustained the
relationship of wife to you for many years."

The head of the proud man dropped before her with an air of humility
entirely foreign to the "distinguished" Gerald Goddard whom the world
knew; but, though crushed by a sense of shame and grief, he could but
own to himself that her condemnation was just, and the faint hope that
had sprung up in his heart died, then and there, its tragic death.

CHAPTER XXX.

"I HATE YOU WITH ALL THE STRENGTH OF MY ITALIAN BLOOD."

Isabel Stewar