They walked on in silence for some time, and more than one passer-by stared in astonishment at the unaccustomed spectacle of a well-dressed man with an unmistakable beggar hanging on to his arm, and, observing this, Villiers led the way to an obscure street in Soho.  Here he repeated his question.

“How on earth has it happened, Herbert?  I always understood you would succeed to an excellent position in Dorsetshire.  Did your father disinherit you?  Surely not?”

“No, Villiers; I came into all the property at my poor father’s death; he died a year after I left Oxford.  He was a very good father to me, and I mourned his death sincerely enough.  But you know what young men are; a few months later I came up to town and went a good deal into society.  Of course I had excellent introductions, and I managed to enjoy myself very much in a harmless sort of way.  I played a little, certainly, but never for heavy stakes, and the few bets I made on races brought me in money—­only a few pounds, you know, but enough to pay for cigars and such petty pleasures.  It was in my second season that the tide turned.  Of course you have heard of my marriage?”

“No, I never heard anything about it.”

“Yes, I married, Villiers.  I met a girl, a girl of the most wonderful and most strange beauty, at the house of some people whom I knew.  I cannot tell you her age; I never knew it, but, so far as I can guess, I should think she must have been about nineteen when I made her acquaintance.  My friends had come to know her at Florence; she told them she was an orphan, the child of an English father and an Italian mother, and she charmed them as she charmed me.  The first time I saw her was at an evening party.  I was standing by the door talking to a friend, when suddenly above the hum and babble of conversation I heard a voice which seemed to thrill to my heart.  She was singing an Italian song.  I was introduced to her that evening, and in three months I married Helen.  Villiers, that woman, if I can call her woman, corrupted my soul.  The night of the wedding I found myself sitting in her bedroom in the hotel, listening to her talk.  She was sitting up in bed, and I listened to her as she spoke in her beautiful voice, spoke of things which even now I would not dare whisper in the blackest night, though I stood in the midst of a wilderness.  You, Villiers, you may think you know life, and London, and what goes on day and night in this dreadful city; for all I can say you may have heard the talk of the vilest, but I tell you you can have no conception of what I know, not in your most fantastic, hideous dreams can you have imaged forth the faintest shadow of what I have heard—­and seen.  Yes, seen.  I have seen the incredible, such horrors that even I myself sometimes stop in the middle of the street and ask whether it is possible for a man to behold such things and live.  In a year, Villiers, I was a ruined man, in body and soul—­in body and soul.”