re; a few months later I came up to town and went a good deal into
society. Of course I had excellent introductions, and I managed to
enjoy myself very much in a harmless sort of way. I played a little,
certainly, but never for heavy stakes, and the few bets I made on races
brought me in money--only a few pounds, you know, but enough to pay for
cigars and such petty pleasures. It was in my second season that the
tide turned. Of course you have heard of my marriage?"

"No, I never heard anything about it."

"Yes, I married, Villiers. I met a girl, a girl of the most wonderful
and most strange beauty, at the house of some people whom I knew. I
cannot tell you her age; I never knew it, but, so far as I can guess, I
should think she must have been about nineteen when I made her
acquaintance. My friends had come to know her at Florence; she told
them she was an orphan, the child of an English father and an Italian
mother, and she charmed them as she charmed me. The first time I saw
her was at an evening party. I was standing by the door talking to a
friend, when suddenly above the hum and babble of conversation I heard
a voice which seemed to thrill to my heart. She was singing an Italian
song. I was introduced to her that evening, and in three months I
married Helen. Villiers, that woman, if I can call her woman,
corrupted my soul. The night of the wedding I found myself sitting in
her bedroom in the hotel, listening to her talk. She was sitting up in
bed, and I listened to her as she spoke in her beautiful voice, spoke
of things which even now I would not dare whisper in the blackest
night, though I stood in the midst of a wilderness. You, Villiers,
you may think you know life, and London, and what goes on day and night
in this dreadful city; for all I can say you may have heard the talk of
the vilest, but I tell you you can have no conception of what I know,
not in your most fantastic, hideous dreams can you have imaged forth
the faintest shadow of what I have heard--and seen. Yes, seen. I have
seen the incredible, such horrors that even I myself sometimes stop in
the middle of the street and ask whether it is possible for a man to
behold such things and live. In a year, Villiers, I was a ruined man,
in body and soul--in body and soul."

"But your property, Herbert? You had land in Dorset."

"I sold it all; the fields and woods, the dear old house--everything."

"And the money?"

"She took it all