d breast, which rose and fell as a storm-tossed
vessel amid tempestuous seas.

"You cannot blame me for it," said she wildly. "You slighted me, you
trifled with me, you goaded me to it! I would do it again; if need
be!"

"Once has been enough," Jerome told her, in sadness. Speech was an
effort to him; when a man regards some treasure, once his own now lost
to him, he thinks much, but he has little to say. That little, nine
times out of ten, would better be left unsaid. Jerome felt it so; for
a long time he said nothing more--he only continued to look at the
woman he had lost.

She continued to contemplate the floor, until those polished boards,
waxed in readiness for gay dancers' feet, became to her a sorry sight
indeed, and a source of nervous irritation. When their glances
encountered again, hers was full of passionate entreaty, his of
inflamed regret.

"I have a question to put to you," he broke forth, harshly. "What
right have you to marry Rube Rutland, loving me?"

"The same right that you have to marry Clara Rutland, loving me!"

This turned the tables. Now Jerome's glance was riveted upon those
polished boards, and she looked at him. She had not had so good a look
at him in a long time, and her two eyes had never been eyes enough to
take in as much of him as her heart craved.

"At least," said Jerome, regaining his composure and holding up his
head, "this much may be said for me. My contract with her was made in
good faith. I liked her well enough--I loved no one else--it was all
right until I met you. My soul is as a pure white dove in this matter,
compared to yours! And these bonds of mine, they hang but by a single
thread. Our future would have been assured but for your broken
faith."

"Mine? It is all _your_ fault, not mine! Had you trusted me, as a man
ought to trust the woman he loves, all might have been well with us."

"All would have been well with us had you trusted _me_, as a woman
should trust the man she loves. Did I not ask you so to trust me?
Great God! Mellville, could I conceive that you would stake your
future happiness--our future happiness, on the paltry issues of a
foot-race? That whole day my mind was full of projects for bringing
about a happy termination to all our troubles. I could have done it! I
would have done it! But now!"

Lashed into fury by a vivid conception of his own wrongs, brought
about, as he chose to consider, through her treachery alone, Jerome
turned upon her