nervousness of the slipper
that prompted the question. To his thinking there was nothing more
talkative than the foot of a pretty woman.

Eden shrugged her shoulders. "I didn't expect you," she said; "I am sure
that I wouldn't have received you if I had."

"Ah, that is hardly gracious now."

"Besides, your reputation is deplorable."

"No one has any reputation, nowadays," Maule answered, with the air of a
man describing the state of the weather. "You hear the most scandalous
things about everyone. Who has been talking against me? A woman, I
wager. Do you know what hell is paved with?"

"Not with your good intentions, I am positive."

"It is paved with women's tongues. That is what it is paved with. What
am I accused of now?"

"As if I knew or cared. In my opinion you are depraved, and that is
sufficient."

"Why do you call me depraved? You are not fair. Depravity is synonymous
with the unnatural. Girls in short frocks don't interest me. Never yet
have I loitered in the boudoir of a cocotte. Corydon was not a gentleman
whom I would imitate. Neither was Narcissus. On the other hand, I like
refined women. I have an unquestionable admiration for a pretty face.
What man whose health is good has not? If capacity for such admiration
constitutes depravity, then depraved I am." He paused. "H'm," he
muttered to himself, "there's nothing of the Joseph about me."

But he might have continued his speech aloud. Eden had ceased to hear,
her thoughts were far away. He looked at her inquiringly.

"Something is the matter," he said at last. "What has happened?"

Eden aroused herself ever so little from her reverie. "Nothing," she
answered. "I wish you would go away."

"Something _is_ the matter," he insisted. "Tell me what is troubling
you. Who is there to whom you can turn more readily than to me? Eden,
you forget so easily. For months I was at your side. And abruptly, a
rumor, a whisper, a wind that passes took you from me. Eden, _I_ have
not changed. Nor have you ceased to preside over my life. It is idle and
useless enough, I know. With your aid it would have been less valueless,
I think; but such as it is, it is wholly yours. Tell me, what it is that
troubles you."

And Eden, influenced either by the caress of the words or that longing
which in moments of mental anguish forces us to voice the affliction,
though it be but to a wall, looked in his face and answered:

"A hole has been dug in my heart, and in that hole