which was seen by Rose? We are not going to give
a minute description. The public has already been circumstantially
instructed by such edifying books as "Cometh up as a Flower," and
others of a like turn, in what manner and in what terms married women
can abdicate the dignity of their sex, and degrade themselves so
far as to offer their whole life, and their whole selves, to some
reluctant man, with too much remaining conscience or prudence to
accept the sacrifice.

It was from some such wild, passionate utterances of Lillie that Harry
felt a recoil of mingled conscience, fear, and that disgust which man
feels when she, whom God made to be sought, degrades herself to seek.
There is no edification and no propriety in highly colored and minute
drawing of such scenes of temptation and degradation, though they
are the stock and staple of some French novels, and more disgusting
English ones made on their model. Harry felt in his own conscience
that he had been acting a most unworthy part, that no advances on the
part of Lillie could excuse his conduct; and his thoughts went back
somewhat regretfully to the days long ago, when she was a fair,
pretty, innocent girl, and he had loved her honestly and truly.
Unperceived by himself, the character of Rose was exerting a
powerful influence over him; and, when he met that look of pain and
astonishment which he had seen in her large blue eyes the night
before, it seemed to awaken many things within him. It is astonishing
how blindly people sometimes go on as to the character of their own
conduct, till suddenly, like a torch in a dark place, the light of
another person's opinion is thrown in upon them, and they begin to
judge themselves under the quickening influence of another person's
moral magnetism. Then, indeed, it often happens that the graves give
up their dead, and that there is a sort of interior resurrection and
judgment.

Harry did not seem to be consciously thinking of Rose, and yet the
undertone of all that night's uneasiness was a something that had
been roused and quickened in him by his acquaintance with her. How he
loathed himself for the last few weeks of his life! How he loathed
that hot, lurid, murky atmosphere of flirtation and passion and French
sentimentality in which he had been living!--atmosphere as hard to
draw healthy breath in as the odor of wilting tuberoses the day after
a party.

Harry valued Rose's good opinion as he had never valued it before;
a