ually to say that
you yourself ever have figured in such an incident?"

She made no answer to him, save to look straight into his eyes,
chin in hand still, her long white arm lying out, motionless, her
posture free of nervous strain or unrest. Slowly her lips parted,
showing her fine white teeth in a half smile. Her eyes smiled
also, with wisdom in their look.

The venerable statesman opposed to her all at once felt his
resources going. He knew that his quest was over, that this young
woman was after all able to fend for herself.

"What would you do?" she demanded of him. "If you were a woman and
knew you were merely coveted in general, as a woman, and that you
had been just cheaply played for in a game of cards, in a public
place--what would you do, if you could, to the man who lost--or the
man who won? Would you be delivered over? That woman, was
she--but she could not help herself; she had no place to turn, poor
girl? And she paid all her life, then, for some act earlier, which
left her fair game? Was that it?"

"But you, my dear girl! It is impossible!"

"I was more fortunate, that is all. Would you blame me if I
dreaded the memory of such an incident; if I felt a certain
shrinking from one who ever figured in such an incident? If I
could trust--but then, but then--Are you very sure that Mr. Parish
loved that woman?"

"I am sure of it," answered the old man soberly. "Did he use her
well?"

"All her life. He gave her everything--"

"Oh, that is nothing! Did he give her--after he had learned,
maybe, that she was not what he had thought--did he give her
then--love--belief, trust? Did he--are you very sure that any man
in such case, after such an incident, _could_ have loved, really
loved, the woman whom he held in that way--"

"I not only believe he might, my dear girl, but I know that in this
one case--the only one of my experience"--he smiled--"such was the
truth. There was some untold reason why they two did not, or could
not, marry. I do not go into that.

"Consider, my dear girl," he resumed; "you are young, and I am so
old that it is as though I too were young now and had no
experience--so we may talk. Our life is a contest among men for
money and for love; that is all success can bring us. In older
days men fought for that. To-day we have modified life a little,
and have other ways; but I fancy the game in which that certain
lady figured was only one form of contest--it was a f