I had supposed that I was an emancipated woman when I came to New York.  But one who has renounced the world, the flesh and the devil, knowing them only from pictures in magazines and Sunday supplements; such a one may find that he has still some need of fasting and praying.  The particular temptation which overcame me was this picture of the bride-to-be.  I wanted to see her, and I went and stood for hours in a crowd of curious women, and saw the wedding party enter the great Fifth Avenue Church, and discovered that my Sylvia’s hair was golden, and her eyes a strange and wonderful red-brown.  And this was the moment that fate had chosen to throw Claire Lepage into my arms, and give me the key to the future of Sylvia’s life.

3.  I am uncertain how much I should tell about Claire Lepage.  It is a story which is popular in a certain sort of novel, but I have no wish for that easy success.  Towards Claire herself I had no trace of the conventional attitude, whether of contempt or of curiosity.  She was to me the product of a social system, of the great New Nineveh which I was investigating.  And later on, when I knew her, she was a weak sister whom I tried to help.

It happened that I knew much more about such matters than the average woman—­owing to a tragedy in my life.  When I was about twenty-five years old, my brother-in-law had moved his family to our part of the world, and one of his boys had become very dear to me.  This boy later on had got into trouble, and rather than tell anyone about it, had shot himself.  So my eyes had been opened to things that are usually hidden from my sex; for the sake of my own sons, I had set out to study the underground ways of the male creature.  I developed the curious custom of digging out every man I met, and making him lay bare his inmost life to me; so you may understand that it was no ordinary pair of woman’s arms into which Claire Lepage was thrown.

At first I attributed her vices to her environment, but soon I realized that this was a mistake; the women of her world do not as a rule go to pieces.  Many of them I met were free and independent women, one or two of them intellectual and worth knowing.  For the most part such women marry well, in the worldly sense, and live as contented lives as the average lady who secures her life-contract at the outset.  If you had met Claire at an earlier period of her career, and if she had been concerned to impress you, you might have thought her a charming hostess.  She had come of good family, and been educated in a convent—­much better educated than many society girls in America.  She spoke English as well as she did French, and she had read some poetry, and could use the language of idealism whenever necessary.  She had even a certain religious streak, and could voice the most generous sentiments, and really believe that she believed them.  So it might have been some time before you discovered the springs of her weakness.