ithout recognizing
me, and I have said nothing, knowing that the equality of childhood is
no more than a vague recollection...."

Thus she had grown into womanhood. A few of her father's casual
bargains had permitted them to continue this existence of brilliant and
expensive poverty. The promoter had considered such environment
indispensable for his future negotiations. Life in the most expensive
hotels, an automobile by the month, gowns designed by the greatest
modistes for his wife and daughter, summers at the most fashionable
resorts, winter-skating in Switzerland,--all these luxuries were for
him but a kind of uniform of respectability that kept him in the world
of the powerful, permitting him to enter everywhere.

"This existence molded me forever, and has influenced the rest of my
life. Dishonor, death, anything is to me preferable to poverty.... I,
who have no fear of danger, become a coward at the mere thought of
that!"

The mother died, credulous and sensuous, worn out with expecting a
solid fortune that never arrived. The daughter continued with her
father, becoming the type of young woman who lives among men from hotel
to hotel, always somewhat masculine in her attitude;--a half-way virgin
who knows everything, is not frightened at anything, guards ferociously
the integrity of her sex, calculating just what it may be worth, and
adoring wealth as the most powerful divinity on earth.

Finding herself upon her father's death with no other fortune than her
gowns and a few artistic gems of scant value, she had coldly decided
upon her destiny.

"In our world there is no other virtue than that of money. The girls of
the people surrender themselves less easily than a young woman
accustomed to luxury having as her only fortune some knowledge of the
piano, of dancing, and a few languages.... We yield our body as though
fulfilling a material function, without shame and without regret. It is
a simple matter of business. The only thing that matters is to preserve
the former life with all its conveniences ... not to come down."

She passed hastily over her recollection of this period of her
existence. An old acquaintance of her father, an old trader of Vienna,
had been the first. Then she felt romantic flutterings which even the
coldest and most positive women do not escape. She believed that she
had fallen in love with a Dutch officer, a blonde Apollo who used to
skate with her in Saint Moritz. This had been her on