ecome
his wife. Why not? She would never love anyone; but she could not go to the
altar with him unless she told him the truth. She did not love him. Was he
willing to take her, knowing this?

He was. Love meant little to him--though he did not say so. He was just
wise enough to keep that secret within himself.

"I'll make you love me," he told her, with all the ardor he could put into
his voice. Few women can withstand that age-old phrase.

There followed a time of utter disillusion for her. The great house on the
Avenue proved to be but four bleak walls; and when the villa on Long Island
was built, she tried to be as enthusiastic as Morgan wanted her to be. He
lavished gifts upon her. He brought out gay house-parties for weekends.
Lucia did her best to keep her part of a bad bargain. She made herself
lovely, and Pell was proud of her physical charms. The jewel was worth the
finest settings, and these he supplied, with no thought of the cost. He had
someone at the head of his table of whom he was very proud. The world need
never know the solemnity of their lives when the curtain was lowered and
they were alone together. After all, many marriages were like this. Theirs
was by no means an exceptional case; and he experienced a curious secret
joy in the fact that he knew other men envied him his wife, and wondered at
his power to hold her.

And so the months rolled by, with a trip abroad now and then to relieve the
tedium of existence. For a woman to know that she comes to be tolerated
only because she is decorative, is a consummating blow. Pell soon reached
the point where he told Lucia he had bought her, body and soul. He had
determined to win her love. When he saw that he could not, he swiftly
forgot the integrity of her part of the bargain, the honesty of her words
to him before they were married; and he practised subtle cruelties to tame
her and bring her at last to him.

He began to drink too much. Only a certain pride in his business affairs,
the desire to keep a level head, a clear brain, kept him from sinking
definitely to the gutter. He became irritable with her. Nothing she did
pleased him. He found he could not wound her sufficiently when he was
sober; so he fortified himself with alcohol, gained courage to speak flat
truths, and left her alone for days at a time, thinking such absences were
a punishment.

Had he but known it, they were the only bright oases in her monotonous
life. She blessed those hour