e painful realization that he had read the contents
rushed on her.

"How dared you?" She tried to seize the letter, but he, anticipating her
move, withdrew his arm and thrust the missive into his pocket. "I didn't
believe it possible you could sink so low," she murmured. "But this is
the end," she added with sudden vehemence. "I shall leave this house
to-day."

"Oh, no, you won't!" An angry scowl contorted his face. "You've flaunted
your superior virtues in my face--accused me of cruelty and neglect and
selfishness. Everybody, including your brother, believes you to be the
long-suffering, patient little angel. You've been the woman with the
noble soul--I've been the unworthy rascal. Now you stand there, your
feelings outraged, because I had the foresight to intercept an
incriminating letter. You calmly tell me it's the end. You're going to
leave. It makes no difference how much scandal you bring on my name.
You--"

She checked him with a contemptuous toss of the head. All the suffering
which she had endured through the years of their married life now
resolved itself into a fury of resentment.

"Your name!" she exclaimed with cutting irony. "As if anything which I
might do could add to the weight of dishonor that you have imposed upon
it! I don't know the contents of that letter, but it's from Herbert
Whitmore and he's as incapable of a dishonorable act as you are
incapable of anything honorable. And you had the audacity to open and
read that letter!"

She paused, fixing him with her eyes, her lips curled into a disdainful
smile. But the fire of her scorn left him unseared. His calloused
sensibilities had long ago lost their capability of appreciating a
nature such as hers. For his wife to have a letter addressed to her such
as he had intercepted, spelled guilt. The debasing environment into
which he had plunged on inheriting the fortune which his father had
accumulated, had undermined all his faith in womanhood. He could not see
beyond the Tenderloin purview.

But pride and selfishness were screamingly alive within him. To these
was added the inordinate conceit of the habitual libertine, a
combination than which there is nothing more sensitive in the entire
human composition.

But as Collins gazed on the graceful lines of her full figure and on the
almost classic beauty of her marmoreal features, he could not stifle a
pang of anxiety at thought of losing her. The fact that he had discarded
her in all but name,