“I boarded all winter with a friend who had moved to Chicago during my absence. The next spring he invested $200 for me and in a year it had made $5,000. He felt he was better able to provide me with a good home of my own now, and so he found a beautiful little flat, which he furnished very cozily.
“He came to Chicago every week, ostensibly on business, and remained two days. Of course my living this kind of a life necessitated my giving up all my former friends; they would wonder and ask questions and rather than lie, I ostracised myself.
“I had learned to love him devotedly by this time, for he was so good to me, my slightest wish was anticipated, and he loved me with such tenderness as only a strong man can bestow.”
“Tell me again that he was good to you,” said the clergyman.
“Why,” she said, wonderingly, her eyes meeting his for the first time since she began her narrative.
“I—I only wanted to be reassured of the fact that while Fre—this man, I mean, had done you the greatest wrong that a man can do a woman, he tried to make reparation.”
“Yes, he was good, until—until,” and again her face was drawn in agony and her frail form quivered, “well, until the time came when he could not come every week. Business was such that it was impossible, he said. I grew so lonely that I thought I should die.
“During this period of loneliness, I met an old school mate on the street one day. She seemed very glad to see me and insisted on my going to Rector’s with her, where she had an appointment to dine with her friend. I went and it was the same old story. Her friend was a strikingly handsome fellow and I was a pretty girl then,” she said with a wan smile, “and we became enamored of each other.
“He asked to call and I allowed him to come. He came often and finally in a moment of weakness I yielded to his importunities. This was my fatal mistake. Fred came unexpectedly the next day and I was so remorseful and conscious stricken that I could not appear natural. He took me gently in his arms and begged me to tell him what the matter was. I sobbed it all out to him, yes, every word of the truth, and instead of forgiving me as he should have done, he tore my arms from about his neck, and threw me from him.
“I think I must have fainted, for when I became conscious of my surroundings, he had gone.”