ed. He has destroyed my life, so that I am--what I am."

She looked down upon the kneeling man before her, and suddenly the wild
look of hatred and unrelenting sternness died out of her face.

"And now," she went on softly, "as things are, I could almost bless him
for what he has done." Bitter irony invaded her tone. "Besides, he has
bidden me adieu now like a man of honour. He is in Paris, and is going
henceforth to devote himself entirely to art."

But then again lamentations burst from her lips, and long pent-up
confessions, which she poured forth with a self-accusing candour.

"Listen, beloved," she said. "When he took me for his wife, a sort of
dizzy enchantment overwhelmed me. We lived as in a mad whirl of
intoxication. The hours that were not passed together we counted lost;
and there was nothing he could have asked of me in vain. He set my foot
on his neck and called me queen, goddess. And I--I gave him my beauty."

She lifted her head with an imperial gesture, and a proud smile curved
her lips.

"I was a spendthrift," she went on. "Undraped I have danced before him;
and down in the garden he had a tent erected--people never could guess
the purpose of those canvas walls, but there I sat to him, naked, on
his dun-coloured Irish mare, Lady Godiva. And he fell weeping on his
knees and worshipped me. He longed for a thousand eyes, that he might
drink in the twofold beauty--mine, and the noble animal's. He boasted
that he would not repine if his eyes were stricken with blindness after
having looked upon us."

She paused for a moment. The eternal might of beauty illumined her brow
as though with an invisible crown. Then she bowed her head, and her
voice lost its resonance.

"All that I gave him. I was no miser. The day came in which I repented
my generosity. I suffered when he turned from me; but jealousy I felt
none. Perhaps I was to blame for not recovering my pride at once. But
through my love he had taught me that it is bitter indeed to love in
vain."

She was silent. Her features hardened, and a deep furrow was graven in
her smooth forehead.

"And then," her voice continued; "then came the moment of that terrible
revelation. I do not know how I bore it. I was struck as by a
lightning-flash; I was shattered. I wanted to leave him; but my people
at home would not consent, and I--I could not tell him. Unresisting I
let them do with me what they would. I would lie like a corpse, without
movement or sensat