on again:  “One evening I went out with another girl and her brother—­at least she said he was her brother—­to see the illuminations for the Queen’s birthday.  In Pall Mall we got into a crowd caused by a quarrel between two drunken men.  I was separated from my companions, and one of the crowd, also tipsy, reeled against me.  I should have been knocked down but for a gentleman who caught me; he had just come down the steps from one of the clubs.  I thanked him.  He kindly helped me to find my companions.  He came on with us almost to the door of Madame Celine’s house.  He talked frankly and pleasantly.  Two days after I was going to the City on madame’s business.  He met me.  He said he had watched for me.  There!  I cannot go into details.  We met repeatedly.  For the first time in my life I was sought, and, as I believed, warmly loved.  I knew the unspeakable gulf that opened for me, but I loved him.  At last there was light and color in my poverty-stricken existence.”  She stopped, and a glow came into her sad eyes.  “I was bewildered, distracted, between the passion of my heart and the resistance of my reason.  I ceased to be the efficient assistant I had been.  I was rebuked, and looked upon coldly.  Six months after I had met him first, I gave madame warning.  I said I was going into the country.  So I was, but not alone.  No one asked me any questions; no one had a right.  I belonged to no one, was responsible to no one, could wound no one.  I was quite alone, and, oh, so hungry for a little love and joy!” She paused, and then resumed rapidly, “I was that man’s unwedded wife for nearly two years.”  She rested her arm on the table, and hid her face with her hand.

Katherine listened with unspeakable emotion.  The eloquent blood flushed cheek and throat with a keen sense of shame.  She had read and heard of such painful stories, but to be face to face with a creature who had crossed the Rubicon, overpassed the great gulf, which separates the sheep from the goats was something so unexpected, so terrible, that she could not restrain a passionate burst of tears.  “Ah,” she murmured at last, “you were cruelly deceived, no doubt.  You are too hard upon yourself.  You——­”

“No, Miss Liddell; I am trying to tell you the whole truth.  The man I loved never deceived me—­never held put any hope that we could marry.  He was not rich; there were impediments—­what, I never knew.  But I thought such love as he professed, and at the time felt for me, would last; and so long as he was mine, I wanted nothing more.  Have you patience to hear more, or have I fallen too low to retain your interest?”

“Ah, no! tell me everything.”