"I have staked my all, all my happiness and peace, upon a cast and have lost. I am very badly hit, and naturally I feel it very badly for a time!"
"Ley!" she murmured, reproachfully, "you must not talk to me like this; speak from your heart."
"I haven't any left, Lil!" he said; "there is only an aching void where my heart used to be. I lost it weeks ago—or was it months or years? I can't tell which now!—and she to whom I gave it, she whom I thought an angel of purity, a dove of innocence, has thrown it in the dirt and trampled upon it!"
"Ley, Ley, you torture me! Of whom are you speaking?"
"Of whom should I be speaking but the one woman the world holds for me?"
"Lenore!" she murmured, incredulously.
"Lenore!" and he laughed bitterly. "No; she did not pronounce her name so. I am speaking and thinking of Stella Etheridge."
Her hand trembled, but she did not withdraw it.
"Stella?"
"Yes," he said, and his lips twitched. "A star. A star that will shine in another man's bosom, not in mine as I, fool that I was, dreamed that it would. Lil, I believe that there is only one good woman in the world, and she sits near me now."