something of my love for her, my better love.  But she was insatiable and more sensual every day.  One day she came when I was not well, and would not go away disappointed.  I had met a very pretty girl about this time, and now resolved to give Annie up, which I did in the cruelest manner, cutting her dead, and refusing to answer her letters and touching messages.  I heard that she would cry for hours, but I was harder than adamant....

“I thought myself very much in love with the very pretty girl for whom I had thrown up Annie.  She lived with her mother and two sisters, one older than herself, the other a mere child.  The eldest sister, a handsome, dark girl like a Spaniard, was not virtuous.  She was good natured; too much so, and took her pleasure with several of us, dying, not long after, of consumption.  I thought her sister, my girl, was virtuous, and I meant to marry her—­some day.  At any rate, I saw her mother, who lived in a well-furnished house and was a superior woman.  This did not prevent my trying to seduce her daughter.  I did not succeed for a long time, though she did not cease meeting me.  The sisters came to see us.  I knew, one night, her sister was upstairs with D. and I guessed what they were at, so I suggested to her she should creep up on them for fun.  She did so, came back, excited and pale—­and gave herself to me.  But she was not a virgin and in time I had a glimpse of her unhappy fate and her mother’s position.  Her father was dead or divorced, and her mother, I believe, was mistress to some wealthy bookmaker.  I am not sure, there was always a mystery hanging over the mother, nor am I certain that she connived at her daughter’s seduction, but the girl’s account was that after some successful Cup day there had been too much champagne drunk all around, and that a man she looked on as a friend came into her bedroom that night when she was tete montee and seduced or violated her—­whichever word you like to choose.  Since then his visits had been frequent until she met me, she said, and if I would be true to her she would be a true wife to me, and I believed her and still believe she meant what she said.  But I left Melbourne shortly after this, our letters got few and far between, and ultimately I heard she was married to a young man who had always been in love with her....

“Among the inmates of the boarding house was a ‘married’ couple who stayed for some time; he was an insignificant, ugly, little, crosseyed commercial traveler; she was a pretty, little creature who looked as innocent and was as merry as a child; we all vied in paying her attentions and waiting on her like slaves, the husband always smiling a cryptic smile.  After they had left it was hinted they were not married at all; the oldest hands had been taken in....  One afternoon I met Dolly, the commercial traveler’s wife, and she stopped and spoke to me.  I remembered what I had heard and ventured on some pleasantry