, and I too modest and humble for you. I have been
warned against you. People say you are fickle.'

'Who could have slandered me so? Your modesty is the very thing that has
attracted me to you. I have crossed the garden without looking at any
other flower in order to come to you straight. What I want is a heart
like yours--tender, faithful--a heart that I may feel is mine for the
rest of my days.'

And he swears his love, always promising matrimony as soon as a few
difficulties, 'over which he has no control,' are surmounted. The poor
little violet is fascinated, won; she loves him, and gives herself to
him; but it is not long before he goes.

'Surely,' she says, with her eyes filled with tears, 'you are not going
to abandon me. You are not going to leave me to fight the great big
battle of life alone, with all the other flowers of the garden to sneer
at me and despise me! Oh no, dear; I have loved you with my modest soul;
I have given you all I have in the world. No, no, you are not going
away, never to return again! It would be too cruel! No, the world is not
so bad as that; you will return, won't you?'

'I feel very sorry for you, dear--really very sorry; but, you see, I
cannot. I am a gentleman, and I have my social position to think of. I
am sure you understand that. You say you are fond of me; then you will
put yourself in my place, and conclude that I have done the best I could
for you. Good-bye! Forget me as quickly as you can.'

The little violet commits suicide; and the butterfly, reading an account
of it in the following day's papers, has not even a tear to shed, no
remorse, no regret.

A SHINING SOCIAL LIGHT.

He is called by his club friends 'a devil of a fellow with the girls,'
and that is almost meant as a compliment. As for the women of the very
best society, he is thought rather enterprising and dangerous; but I
have never heard that, for his conduct, he has ever been turned out of a
respectable house or of a decent club.

There is one drawback to the perfect happiness of the butterfly: he is
generally in love with a worthless woman, who makes a fool of him.

CHAPTER IV

WOMEN LOVE BETTER THAN MEN

How many people understand what love means? How many appreciate it? How
many ever realize what it is? For some it is a more or less sickly
sentiment, for others merely violent desires.

Alas! it requires so many qualifications to appreciate love that very
few people are sufficiently f