ke texture. It would leave one ashamed and broken, for
fundamentally he was contemptuous of the dignity of personality,
particularly of the personalities of women. He was a collector, you
understand, a collector of beauty, and women, and incidents--amorous
incidents. He carried into his personal relationships the cold
objectiveness of the artist. But he wasn't a very great artist, or he
wouldn't have done so; he would have had the discrimination to control
the artist's greatest peril. It's a flame, this cold objectiveness, but
a flame so powerful that it must be properly shaded for intimate use.
Otherwise it kills like violet rays. Women wore out their hearts on him,
not like waves breaking on a crystal rock, but like rain breaking into a
gutter."

"Good Lord!" murmured Mrs. Ennis involuntarily.

Burnaby caught her exclamation. "Bad, wasn't it?" he smiled. "But
remember I am only repeating what Mackintosh told me. Well, there he was
then--Mackintosh--hard at work all day trying to build himself up a
ranch, and he was succeeding, too, and, at night, sitting on his porch,
smoking and listening to the river, and apparently expecting every
moment the girl to appear. It was rather eerie. He had such a convincing
way; he was himself so convinced. You half expected yourself to see her
come around the corner of the log house in the moonlight. There was
about it all the impression that here was something that had a touch of
the inevitability of the Greek idea of fate; something more arranged
than the usual course of human events. Meanwhile, back in the East, was
the girl, learning something about life."

He interrupted himself. "Want a cigarette?" he said to Pollen. "Here
they are." He handed over the box. "What is it? A match? Wait a moment;
I'll strike it for you. Keep the end of the thing steady, will you? All
right." He resumed the thread of his narrative.

"In four years she had learned a lot," he said; "she had become
apparently almost a woman. On a certain hot evening in July--about seven
o'clock, I imagine--she became one entirely; at least, for the moment,
and, at least, her sort of woman. I am not defending what she did,
remember; I am simply saying that she did it.

"It was very hot; even now when dusk was approaching. The girl had been
feeling rather ill all day; feverish. She had not been able to get away
to her country place as yet. Into the semidarkness of the room where she
was came her husband. That night s