it, eloquent, nor
dramatic. However, I determined to try what I could do. I said: "I fancy
you would like something in the line of adventure; but my career has not
run in that direction, so I shall resort to less exciting fields, and, I
fear, also, a not very cheerful subject."

"Oh, never mind!" said she. "What you wish, so long as it is not
conventional and hackneyed. But I know you will not be prosy, so go on,
please."

"Well," I began, "once, in the hospital, I attended a man--Anson was
his name--who, when he thought he was going to die, confided to me
his life's secret. I liked the man; he was good-looking, amiable, but
hopelessly melancholy. He was dying as much from trouble as disease. No
counsel or encouragement had any effect upon him; he did, as I have seen
so many do--he resigned himself to the out-going tide. Well, for the
secret. He had been a felon. His crime had been committed through
ministering to his wife's vanity."

Here I paused. I felt Mrs. Falchion's eyes searching me. I raised mine
steadily to hers with an impersonal glance, and saw that she had not
changed colour in the least. But her eyes were busy.

I proceeded: "When he was disgraced she did not come near him. When he
went to her, after he was released" (here I thought it best to depart
from any close resemblance to Mrs. Falchion's own story), "and was
admitted to her, she treated him as an absolute stranger--as one who
had intruded, and might be violent. She said that she and her maid were
alone in the house, and hinted that he had come to disturb them. She
bade him go, or she must herself go. He called her by his own name, and
begged her, by the memory of their dead child, to speak kindly to him.
She said he was quite mistaken in her name, that she was Mrs. Glave, not
Mrs. Anson, and again insisted that he should go. He left her, and
at last, broken-hearted, found his way, in illness and poverty to the
hospital, where, toward the last, he was cared for by a noble girl,
a companion of his boyhood and his better days, who urged his wife to
visit him. She left him alone, said unpleasant things to the girl, did
not come to see her husband when he was dead, and provided nothing for
his burial. You see that, like you, she hated suffering and misery--and
criminals. The girl and her mother paid the expenses of the funeral,
and, with myself, were the only mourners. I am doubtful if the wife
knows even where he lies. I admit that the story sounds