had
no hope that he would ever return to her.

She felt now, with inexpressible loathing, the unworthiness of the
charms with which she fascinated the base men around her. The only
sympathy she had was from these, and the only power she possessed was
over them, and through them. The aim of her life was to fascinate them;
the art of her life was to keep them fascinated without the conscious
degradation of herself, and, so, to lead them whithersoever she would.
Her business was the manufacture of slaves--slaves to her personal
charms and her imperious will. Each slave carried around his own secret,
treated her with distant deference in society, spoke of her with
respect, and congratulated himself on possessing her supreme favor. Not
one of them had her heart, or her confidence. With a true woman's
instinct, she knew that no man who would be untrue to his wife would be
true to her. So she played with them as with puppies that might gambol
around her, and fawn before her, but might not smutch her robes with
their dirty feet, or get the opportunity to bite her hand.

She had a house, but she had no home. Again and again the thought came
to her that in a million homes that morning the air was full of
music--hearty greetings between parents and children, sweet prattle from
lips unstained, merry laughter from bosoms without a care. With a heart
full of tender regrets for the mistakes and errors of the past, with
unspeakable contempt for the life she was living, and with vain
yearnings for something better, she rose and determined to join the
throngs that were pressing into the churches. Hastily prepared for the
street, she went out, and soon, her heart responding to the Christmas
music, and her voice to the Christmas utterances from the altar, she
strove to lift her heart in devotion. She felt the better for it. It was
an old habit, and the spasm was over. Having done a good thing, she
turned her ear away from the suggestions of her good angel, and, in
turning away, encountered the suggestions of worldliness from the other
side, which came back to her with their old music. She came out of the
church as one comes out of a theater, where for hours he has sat
absorbed in the fictitious passion of a play, to the grateful rush and
roar of Broadway, the flashing of the lights, and the shouting of the
voices of the real world.

Mr. Belcher called that evening, and she was glad to see him. Arrayed in
all her loveliness, sparkling wi