h which I tried to peer as with my own eyes, at the
personality of this extraordinary female. That she was more than
ordinarily clever there was no reason to doubt; that she was
attractive to the better class of young men in her own set was beyond
dispute; that she was thoroughly unscrupulous as to the means by which
she attained her ends (whatever they were) seemed more than probable.
Perhaps she did not differ greatly from other young female persons in
her own walk of life, but I would have been better pleased if Jerry's
education in the ways of the world could have proceeded a little more
slowly. It seemed to me as I compared them, that the girl Una, who had
called herself Smith, brazen as she was, would have been a much saner
companion. I could not believe, of course, that either of them could
sway Jerry definitely from the path of right thinking, but I realized
that the eleven years during which Jerry had been all mine were but a
short period of time when compared to the years that lay before him.
From the description I had of her, the Van Wyck girl was not at all
the kind of female that I thought Jerry would like. She was an exotic,
and was redolent, I am sure, of faint sweet odors which would perplex
Jerry, who had known nothing but the smell of the forest balsams. She
was effete and oriental, Jerry clean and western.

But, of course, I had not met the girl and my opinion of her was based
upon the merest guesses as to her habits and character. She seemed to
be, according to Ballard, essentially feminine (whatever he meant by
that) and in spite of her protestations to Jerry as to her
self-sufficiency and soundness, to have a faculty for ingratiating
herself into the fullest confidence of the young men who came into her
net.

In looking over the above, it occurs to me that I may be accused of
prejudice against or unfairness to this girl of whom I really knew so
little, for if I do not tell the truth, this work has no value. But
upon consideration I have decided to let my opinions stand, leaving my
own personal point of view to weigh as little or as much as it may in
the mind of my reader. To say that I was jealous of Jerry's attentions
to any young woman would be as far from the truth as to say that I was
not jealous for his happiness. But as several weeks went by and Jerry
did not appear at the Manor, his notes meanwhile becoming more and
more fragmentary, I found a conviction slowly growing in my mind that
my i