nd warm and clean! How good it all is! And how little I
thought of them when I had all these things!"

She got up and looked at a water-colour over the low mantelpiece.

"Madeira, isn't it?" she said. "I seem to remember that peculiar effect
of the vivid purple of the Bougainvillea against the dim, cloudy purple
of the hills behind."

"It is Madeira," I said. "I was there ten years ago. Perhaps you have
read my little book, 'Beside the Bougainvillea'?"

"My husband died there," she said, looking fixedly at the drawing. "He
died just before sunrise, and when it was over I remember looking out
across the sea, past the great English man-of-war in the harbour, to
those three little islands--I forget their names--and as the first level
rays touched them, the islands and the ship all seemed to melt into
half-transparent amethyst in a sea of glass, beneath a sky of glass. How
calm the sea was--hardly a ripple! I felt that even he, weak as he was,
could walk upon it. It was like daybreak in heaven, not on earth. And
his long martyrdom was over. It seemed as if we were both safe home at
last."

"Had he been ill long?"

"A long time. He suffered terribly. And I gave him morphia under the
doctor's directions. And then, when he was gone--not at first, but after
a little bit--I took morphia myself, to numb my own anguish and to get a
little sleep. I thought I should go mad if I could not get any sleep. I
had better have gone mad. But I took morphia instead, and sealed my own
doom. But how can you tell whether I am speaking the truth? Well, it
doesn't matter if you don't believe me. I am accustomed to it. I am
never believed now. And I don't care if I'm not. I don't deserve to be.
But I suppose you can see that I was not always a tramp on the highway.
And, at any rate, that is what I am now, and what I shall remain, unless
I drift into prison again, which God forbid, for I should suffocate in a
cell after the life in the open air which I am accustomed to."

She shivered a little, as if she who seemed devoid of fear quailed at
the remembrance of her cell.

"You are wondering how I have fallen so low," she said. "Do you remember
Kipling's lines--

"We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung?

"Well, I have known what it is to drop down the ladder of life,
clinging convulsively to each rung in turn, losing hold of it, and being
caught back by compassionate hands, only to let go of it again; fighting
desperately to hold