ily
reentered the room.

"Leave me, I pray you!" she cried, with an impetuous gesture of her hand,
as she sank upon the sofa, and buried her face in her hands.

Of course Camors did not obey. He seated himself by her.

In a little while Juliette awoke from her trance; but she awoke a lost
woman!

How bitter was that awakening! She measured at a first glance the depth
of the awful abyss into which she had suddenly plunged. Her husband, her
mother, her infant, whirled like spectres in the mad chaos of her brain.

Sensible of the anguish of an irreparable wrong, she rose, passed her
hand vacantly across her brow, and muttering, "Oh, God! oh, God!" peered
vainly into the dark for light--hope--refuge! There was none!

Her tortured soul cast herself utterly on that of her lover. She turned
her swimming eyes on him and said:

"How you must despise me!"

Camors, half kneeling on the carpet near her, kissed her hand
indifferently and half raised his shoulders in sign of denial. "Is it not
so?" she repeated. "Answer me, Louis."

His face wore a strange, cruel smile--"Do not insist on an answer, I pray
you," he said.

"Then I am right? You do despise me?"

Camors turned himself abruptly full toward her, looked straight in her
face, and said, in a cold, hard voice, "I do!"

To this cruel speech the poor child replied by a wild cry that seemed to
rend her, while her eyes dilated as if under the influence of strong
poison. Camors strode across the room, then returned and stood by her as
he said, in a quick, violent tone:

"You think I am brutal? Perhaps I am, but that can matter little now.
After the irreparable wrong I have done you, there is one service--and
only one which I can now render you. I do it now, and tell you the truth.
Understand me clearly; women who fall do not judge themselves more
harshly than their accomplices judge them. For myself, what would you
have me think of you?

"To his misfortune and my shame, I have known your husband since his
boyhood. There is not a drop of blood in his veins that does not throb
for you; there is not a thought of his day nor a dream of his night that
is not yours; your every comfort comes from his sacrifices--your every
joy from his exertion! See what he is to you!

"You have only seen my name in the journals; you have seen me ride by
your window; I have talked a few times with you, and you yield to me in
one moment the whole of his life with your own--the whole of h