s always in the right. She always will be. She did nothing
to me but hire me to teach her stepson, and when my habits became too
bad, discharge me, as any one would have done. She did nothing to
Arnold except to leave him to the best schools and the best tutors
money could buy. What more could any one have done? She had not the
slightest idea that Horace Gilbert would try to poison his wife,
had not the slightest connection with their quarrel. The young
poet,--Adams was his name, now I remember--did not consult her before
he took to cocaine. Morphine is my own specialty. Victoria of course
deplored it as much as any one could. No, I'm not for a minute
intimating that Victoria is a Messalina. We'd all be better off if she
were. It's only our grossness that finds fault with her. Your aunt
is one of the most respectable women who ever lived, as 'chaste as
unsunned snow--the very ice of chastity is in her!' Indeed, I've often
wondered if the redoubtable Ephraim Smith himself, for all that he
succeeded in marrying her, fared any better than the rest of us.
Victoria would be quite capable of cheating him out of his pay. She
parches, yes, she dries up the blood--but it's not by her passion, not
even by ours. Honest passion never kills. It's the Sahara sands of her
egotism into which we've all emptied our veins."

Sylvia was frozen to the spot by her outraged indignation that any one
should dare speak to her thus. She found herself facing a fresco of a
tall, austere figure in an enveloping white garment, an elderly woman
with a thin, worn, noble face, who laid one fine old hand on a stone
parapet and with divine compassion and tenderness looked out over a
sleeping city. The man followed the direction of her eyes. "It's Puvis
de Chavannes' Ste. Genevieve as an old woman, guarding and praying for
the city. Very good, isn't it? I especially admire the suggestion of
the plain bare cell she has stepped out from. I often come here to
look at it when I've nothing to eat." He seemed as flaccidly willing
to speak on this as on any other topic; to find it no more interesting
than the subject of his former speech.

Sylvia was overcome with horror of him. She walked rapidly away,
towards the door, hoping he would not follow her. He did not. When she
glanced back fearfully over her shoulder, she saw him still standing
there, looking up at the gaunt gray figure of beneficent old age. His
dreadful broken felt hat was in his hand, the water d