truth."

"He knew that, and he took advantage of it," said Bat.

"Was there anything that promised him a profit that Tom Burton did not
take advantage of?" Her glorious eyes flashed and her head, superbly
crowned with masses of bronze hair, was reared, the round, beautifully
moulded chin was held high with scorn. "Was there anything, no matter
how mean, that he wouldn't stoop to, so long as it enabled him to coddle
his vices and go on in his idle way of life?"

Bat sat looking at the wonderfully beautiful and splendidly spirited
creature; and he found himself wondering what had ever led her into a
marriage with a man such as the one she had just described. And, as
though in answer to his thought, she went on:

"But he had a way with him; his only study in life, so he told me once,
had been women; and he knew how to get the better of them. When I first
met him I was playing in a middle western city in a stock company which
gave two performances a day and paid a fairly respectable salary. It was
the first good engagement I'd ever had; the following of the theatre
liked me and I began to be talked about; the east, and the creating of
important parts did not seem so impossible as they had only a little
while before.

"Maybe he heard some whisper of this; I don't know. But we became
acquainted; and I was carried away by him. Never had I met a man who
showed so many brilliant sides of character; he could talk about
anything, and in a way which indicated a mastery of the matter. Every
ambition I cherished met with his approval; everything I longed for
seemed within reach when he talked. It was a species of hypnotism, Bat;
nothing else explains it."

"How a fellow like that could so put it over on a woman like you, Nora,
puzzles me," said Bat Scanlon, shaking his head.

"It would puzzle any right sort of a man," said the girl. "Only a woman
would understand it thoroughly--or a man like Tom Burton. Well, it was
while I was feeling that way about him, completely under his influence,
that I married him. And in a week," here she arose, the cloak falling
from her shoulders as she flung out her arms in a gesture of despair, "I
knew just what I had done. The man was a cheap pretender; he'd never had
an honest thought in his life; he had familiarized himself with all my
little weaknesses and aspirations before he met me; all his learning was
a sham; his good nature was a mask."

"Some discovery for a week old bride to make," a