the property at my poor father's death;
he died a year after I left Oxford. He was a very good father to me, and
I mourned his death sincerely enough. But you know what young men are; a
few months later I came up to town and went a good deal into society. Of
course I had excellent introductions, and I managed to enjoy myself very
much in a harmless sort of way. I played a little, certainly, but never
for heavy stakes, and the few bets I made on races brought me in
money--only a few pounds, you know, but enough to pay for cigars and
such petty pleasures. It was in my second season that the tide turned.
Of course you have heard of my marriage?'

'No, I never heard anything about it.'

'Yes, I married, Villiers. I met a girl, a girl of the most wonderful
and most strange beauty, at the house of some people whom I knew. I
cannot tell you her age; I never knew it, but, so far as I can guess, I
should think she must have been about nineteen when I made her
acquaintance. My friends had come to know her at Florence; she told
them she was an orphan, the child of an English father and an Italian
mother, and she charmed them as she charmed me. The first time I saw her
was at an evening party. I was standing by the door talking to a friend,
when suddenly above the hum and babble of conversation I heard a voice
which seemed to thrill to my heart. She was singing an Italian song. I
was introduced to her that evening, and in three months I married Helen.
Villiers, that woman, if I can call her woman, corrupted my soul. The
night of the wedding I found myself sitting in her bedroom in the hotel,
listening to her talk. She was sitting up in bed, and I listened to her
as she spoke in her beautiful voice, spoke of things which even now I
would not dare whisper in blackest night, though I stood in the midst of
a wilderness. You, Villiers, you may think you know life, and London,
and what goes on day and night in this dreadful city; for all I can say
you may have heard the talk of the vilest, but I tell you you can have
no conception of what I know, not in your most fantastic, hideous dreams
can you have imaged forth the faintest shadow of what I have heard--and
seen. Yes, seen. I have seen the incredible, such horrors that even I
myself sometimes stop in the middle of the street, and ask whether it is
possible for a man to behold such things and live. In a year, Villiers,
I was a ruined man, in body and soul--in body and soul.'

'But yo