t through first!"

Magdalena dragged her shaking limbs across the room and felt for a
chair. Helena began pacing rapidly up and down, pushing the chairs out
of her way.

"Would you like a light?" asked Magdalena.

"No, thanks; I don't want to be eaten alive with mosquitoes. Oh, how
shall I begin? I suppose you think we've had a commonplace quarrel. I
wish we had. I swear to you, 'Lena, that up to to-night I loved
him--yes, I know that I did! I was rather sorry I'd promised to marry so
soon, for I like being a girl, not really belonging to anyone but
myself, and I love being a great belle, and I think that I should have
begged for another year--but I loved him better than anyone, and I
really intended to marry him--"

"Aren't you going to marry him?"

"Don't be so stern, 'Lena! You don't know all yet. Lately I've been
alone with him a great deal, and you know how you talk about yourselves
in those circumstances. I had told him everything I had ever done and
thought--most; had turned myself inside out. Then I made him talk. Up to
a certain point he was fluent enough; then he shut up like a clam. I
never was very curious about men; but because he was all mine, or
perhaps because I didn't have anything else to think about, I made up my
mind he should come to confession. He fought me off, but you know I have
a way of getting what I want--if I don't there's trouble; and to-night I
pulled his past life out of him bit by bit. 'Lena! he's had _liaisons_
with married women; he's kept house with women; he's seen the worst life
of every city! For a few years--he confessed it in so many words--he was
one of the maddest men in Europe. The actual things he told me only in
part; but you know I have the instincts of the devil. 'Lena, _he's a
human slum_, and I hate him! I hate him! I hate him!"

"But that all belongs to his past. He loves you, and you can make him
better--make him forget--"

"I don't want to make any man better. I love everything to be clean and
new and bright,--not mildewed with a thousand vices that I would never
even discuss. Oh, he's a brute to ask me to marry him. I hate myself
that I've been engaged to him! I feel as if I'd tumbled off a pedestal!"

"Are you so much better and purer than I? I knew much of this; but it
did not horrify me. I knew too, what you may not know, that he came here
in a critical time in his--his--inner life, and I was glad to think
that--California had helped him to become quite a