y-six, I fancy, and had received a good
education at the academy of the Western town in which she had been born.
Her grandparents were Italian emigrants, and she had fine black eyes
and a beautiful mouth.

"Well, before many months had passed I knew that she was in desperate
straits, and she offered to go away, reiterating that she had only
intended to take advantage of the temporary haven while she fed her
courage and painted something that might sell. I knew that if she left
me she would throw herself into the Seine, and I persuaded her to stay.
It is not difficult to persuade a stricken woman to remain under a
friendly roof. I was full of sympathy for the poor little thing, but I
don't deny that I was immensely interested, and fairly palpitated with
the thought that I was actually seeing life at first hand. Who the hero
of her romance was I never discovered, except that he was of her own
race, and married, a fact he had concealed until ready to leave Paris.
She told me enough to make me hate all men so violently that the prince
took himself off and left me in peace. But I had trouble enough in my
household. As time went on Veronica's alternate attacks of melancholy
and hysteria were terrible. I sat up night after night to keep her from
throwing herself out of the window; at times she seemed to be quite off
her head. And then she still loved the wretch, and would maunder by the
hour. But it ended, as everything does; and the poor girl died. I have
no desire to linger over the climax. If anything was needed to set the
final seal upon my disgust with life at first hand it was the mean and
sordid details that attend death and burial in Paris. The landlord
behaved like the mercenary fiends they all are; I was obliged to call in
the assistance of the American consul before I could get the body out of
the house, and between all the trouble and fuss poor Veronica's story
was published from the house-tops.

"As soon as it was over I left Paris and started to travel slowly
through Germany, feeling now a real sense of liberty, inasmuch as I was
sure I could be all intellect henceforth, dependent upon nothing so
unsatisfactory as human happiness. I never wanted another real contact
with life. I would travel, and study, and develop my mind, possibly some
latent talent. Many talents are manufactured anyhow, and the world is
always hailing them as genius.

"But, of course, in time, and with constant change of scene, to say
nothi