ock in vulgar curiosity to see the woman who had reigned
in exclusive sets of society from which they were themselves barred;
whose brother had reigned as a magnificent dictator of dollars. They
would come because they had heard of this beauty, and had glutted
themselves with column upon column of yellow and sensational news
recording untold opulence, and afterward of tragedy building on tragedy
to this climax; herself standing there on exhibition in the pillory of
their gaze.

Seats would be filled and applicants turned away from the box-office,
because a large part of the American public differs in no wise from that
of Rome when it gathered in the circus to see a captive princess thrown
to the beasts--or claimed as a captor's slave. Her value could be based
only on pandering to the mob spirit of gloating over the fall of the
great.

They would warm over and republish all the sensational details which
time had cooled. The story she had refused to write, others would not
refuse to write--neither would they refuse to "color" certain scenes
into "drama."

The girl, lying in her bed, pressed her fore-arms against her eyes and
struggled to shut out the pictures that rose as horrors in her mind--but
they passed and repassed with fiendish pertinacity. Nightmare shapes
leered at her from gargoyle features.

To any human being a situation is what it seems to be.

Had she actually, like the Lady Godiva, been called upon to ride the
length of Broadway, clad only in her beautiful hair, and placarded
"Burton's Sister and Edwardes' Fiancee," it could have meant to her
delicacy of feeling no greater trial, no more truly the denuding of
herself to the public gaze.

Had all this realization not been so keen and so poignant Mary Burton
would not have fought so long against the idea which seemed to open the
only way.

Were there just herself she would, before considering such desecration
of every sacred memory, have preferred to stuff with paper the crannies
of that wind-rattled window and to turn on the gas. In comparison this
would have been easy.

Easy! Suddenly the idea became a soul-clutching temptation. It offered
escape from the horror of decision and action; escape, too, from the
haunting of memory. The woman sat up in bed and her eyes gazed
feverishly ahead through the dark. She trembled violently and the plan
invitingly unfolded. Some unseen devil's advocate was urging her, for
the instant half-persuading her, insinu