"It is this that is slowly causing your strength to ebb," he went on;
"it is this acid which is corroding your life."

She gasped. "But it is a very real and additional pain," she exclaimed
hoarsely.

"It is, of course," he assented. "It would be absurd to ignore it. Just
as it would be absurd to ignore the extra filip which your presence, or
your part in the business, adds to this, Leonetta's first affair. For
what is a man to her, after all? Another feather in her cap,--another
bauble! She has left school and her maiden's vanity,--we'll call it
self-esteem,--bids her at once try to confirm the high claims she
rightly thinks her beauty and her sex entitle her to make upon the
world. She wants to win her first crown as May Queen. No deeper passion
is involved. And should a man be induced, in his arrogance, to take
these first steps of hers seriously, she would regret all her life what
was merely a schoolgirl's whim. For society would take no pity on her,
and would compel her to spend her life with a creature of whom she had
only solicited the flattery of a season."

Cleopatra bowed her head, and toyed nervously with a bracelet. She was
breathing heavily, but was now showing no desire to escape.

"But there is a difference, a very deep difference," he continued,
"between the purchaser of a pearl necklet and the purchaser of a loaf of
bread. The first is acquiring merely another ornament, another set-off
to her beauty, another weapon in the fight for supremacy, and she
performs the act with a frivolous smile. The other is obtaining a
primitive and fundamental necessity, and she does it solemnly, aware as
she is of its real uses. The first is the schoolgirl receiving her first
attentions from a man; the second is the woman of passion who knows what
life has promised her."

"Lord Henry," Cleopatra ejaculated, "how wonderfully you understand!"

"What aggravates your pain a thousandfold is the thought you are being
robbed of a necessity, by one who uses it as a toy. You feel as a
starving child might feel who sees the loaf that has been snatched from
him being used as a football."

A tear trickled down Cleopatra's face. "That is wonderfully true," she
assented, and brushed the tear quickly away.

He paused and looked at her for a moment beneath lowered brows. A
wonderful serenity had come upon her, and her lips no longer seemed
tormented with words they did not dare to utter.

"What is so terrible, Lord Henry," sh