ne the sort of woman that I had looked to
find--the only sort that I had ever known--then matters had been easy.
I had set myself in cold blood, and by such wiles as I knew, to win such
affection as might be hers to bestow; and I would have married her in
much the same spirit as a man performs any other of the necessary acts
of his lifetime and station. I would have told her that I was Bardelys,
and to the woman that I had expected to find there had been no
difficulty in making the confession. But to Roxalanne! Had there been
no wager, I might have confessed my identity. As it was, I found it
impossible to avow the one without the other. For the sweet innocence
that invested her gentle, trusting soul must have given pause to any
but the most abandoned of men before committing a vileness in connection
with her.

We were much together during that week, and just as day by day, hour by
hour, my passion grew and grew until it absorbed me utterly, so, too,
did it seem to me that it awakened in her a responsive note. There was
an odd light at times in her soft eyes; I came upon her more than once
with snatches of love-songs on her lips, and when she smiled upon
me there was a sweet tenderness in her smile, which, had things been
different, would have gladdened my soul beyond all else; but which,
things being as they were, was rather wont to heighten my despair. I
was no coxcomb; I had had experiences, and I knew these signs. But
something, too, I guessed of the heart of such a one as Roxalanne. To
the full I realized the pain and shame I should inflict upon her when
my confession came; I realized, too, how the love of this dear child,
so honourable and high of mind, must turn to contempt and scorn when
I plucked away my mask, and let her see how poor a countenance I wore
beneath.

And yet I drifted with the tide of things. It was my habit so to drift,
and the habit of a lifetime is not to be set at naught in a day by a
resolve, however firm. A score of times was I reminded that an evil is
but increased by being ignored. A score of times confession trembled
on my lips, and I burned to tell her everything from its inception--the
environment that had erstwhile warped me, the honesty by which I was now
inspired--and so cast myself upon the mercy of her belief.

She might accept my story, and, attaching credit to it, forgive me the
deception I had practised, and recognize the great truth that must ring
out in the avowal of my lo