CHAPTER I.

A rude awakening.

Marian Vosburgh had been content with her recognized position as a leading belle.  An evening spent in her drawing-room revealed that; but at the close of the particular evening which it was our privilege to select there occurred a trivial incident.  She was led to think, and thought is the precursor of action and change in all natures too strong and positive to drift.  On that night she was an ordinary belle, smiling, radiant, and happy in following the traditions of her past.

She had been admired as a child, as a school-girl, and given a place among the stars of the first magnitude since her formal debut.  Admiration was as essential as sunshine; or, to change the figure, she had a large and a natural and healthful appetite for it.  She was also quite as much entitled to it as the majority of her class.  Thus far she had accepted life as she found it, and was in the main conventional.  She was not a deliberate coquette; it was not her recognized purpose to give a heartache to as many as possible; she merely enjoyed in thoughtless exultation her power to attract young men to her side.  There was keen excitement in watching them, from the moment of introduction, as they passed through the phases of formal acquaintanceship into relations that bordered on sentiment.  When this point was reached experiences sometimes followed which caused not a little compunction.

She soon learned that society was full of men much like herself in some respects, ready to meet new faces, to use their old compliments and flirtation methods over and over again.  They could look unutterable things at half a dozen different girls in the same season, while their hearts remained as invulnerable as old-fashioned pin-cushions, heart-shaped, that adorn country “spare rooms.”  But now and then a man endowed with a deep, strong nature would finally leave her side in troubled wonder or bitter cynicism.  Her fair, young face, her violet eyes, so dark as to appear almost black at night, had given no token that she could amuse herself with feelings that touched the sources of life and death in such admirers.

“They should have known better, that I was not in earnest,” she would say, petulantly, and more or less remorsefully.

But these sincere men, who had been so blind as to credit her with gentle truth and natural intuition, had some ideal of womanhood which had led to their blunder.  Conscious of revealing so much themselves by look, tone, and touch of hand, eager to supplement one significant glance by life-long loyalty, they were slow in understanding that answering significant glances meant only, “I like you very well,—­better than others, just at present; but then I may meet some one to-morrow who is a great deal more fun than you are.”

Fun!  With them it was a question of manhood, of life, and of that which gives the highest value and incentive to life.  It was inevitable, therefore, that Marian Vosburgh should become a mirage to more than one man; and when at last the delusion vanished, there was usually a flinty desert to be crossed before the right, safe path was gained.