n you. Within a few months you had learned to love this
young lady at the place you went to--the first young lady you saw! I had
not done you much harm, Harry. But that which you have done me cannot be
undone."

"Julia," he said, coming up to her.

"No; not Julia. When you were here before I asked you to call me so,
hoping, longing, believing--doing more, so much more than I could have
done, but that I thought my love might now be of service to you. You do
not think that I had heard of this then."

"Oh, no."

"No. It is odd that I should not have known it, as I now hear that she
was at my sister's house; but all others have not been as silent as you
have been. We are quits, Harry; that is all that I have to say. We are
quits now."

"I have intended to be true to you--to you and to her."

"Were you true when you acted as you did the other night?" He could not
explain to her how greatly he had been tempted. "Were you true when you
held me in your arms as that woman came in? Had you not made me think
that I might glory in loving you, and that I might show her that I
scorned her when she thought to promise me her secresy--her secresy, as
though I were ashamed of what she had seen. I was not ashamed--not then.
Had all the world known it I should not have been ashamed. 'I have loved
him long,' I should have said, 'and him only. He is to be my husband,
and now at last I need not be ashamed.'" So much she spoke, standing up,
looking at him with firm face, and uttering her syllables with a quick
clear voice; but at the last word there came a quiver in her tone, and
the strength of her countenance quailed, and there was a tear which made
dim her eye, and she knew that she could no longer stand before him. She
endeavored to seat herself with composure; but the attempt failed, and
as she fell back upon the sofa he just heard the sob which had cost her
so great and vain an effort to restrain. In an instant he was kneeling
at her feet, and grasping at the hand with which she was hiding her face.
"Julia," he said, "look at me; let us at any rate understand each other
at last."

"No, Harry; there must be no more such knowledge--no more such
understanding. You must go from me, and come here no more. Had it not
been for that other night, I would still have endeavored to regard you
as a friend. But I have no right to such friendship. I have sinned and
gone astray, and am a thing vile and polluted. I sold myself as a beast
is sold