She only hesitated a moment, then replied, "You are very kind—you don't know what a treat you are proposing to me. I have been so very dull of late—No!" she cried joyfully, "I cannot refuse you. The prospect is too delightful."
They passed an exceedingly pleasant evening together. When the play was over he put her in a cab and they separated. She would not tell him where she lived, but gave him an address at a stationer's shop to which he might write; and also made an appointment to meet him on the following day.
He walked home aflame with a passion which he fondly believed was love. He considered that he had fallen into a very lucky adventure. Knowing well the weakness of his own character, he argued with himself that it would be an excellent thing for him to be fond of a really nice little woman like this. An intrigue of this kind would keep him straight. It had always been one of his maxims that to have a mistress was a grand thing for a man; it settled him, and preserved him from dissipation.
It was perhaps a rather wild thing to hope to find salvation in such a union as the one he contemplated; nevertheless it has happened to many men of his nature to be regenerated by a mistress.
There are certain men—not of the meanest order—whose happiness and success in life, or misery and failure, entirely depend on women. Of an amorous disposition, love is a necessity to these. If such a man take a good woman as his mate, he is indeed happy in her. She makes him a god; she stimulates him to noble endeavour; encourages him in the dark hours; and raises to success a life that would have yielded to temporary failure.
Happy too is the woman who has thus completed the nature of the powerful weak man, happy in that her benign influence has made a being intellectually so far her superior yet morally her inferior, admirable instead of despicable. Happy too is she, in that the man knows it, and his grateful love burns true and holy until death.
But the bad woman can as easily drag down such a nature, as a good woman can ennoble it. A crisis had now come to the life of the barrister. He had already checked himself on his downward career, he was struggling after the lost good. Were this new friend of his to prove a woman of the right sort, he might probably still become a distinguished man in his profession or in literature.
But, alas! the Fates were against him.
For it happened that this young lady whom the barrister had met was no other than our old acquaintance Susan Riley—the youngest member of the Inner Circle of the Secret Society—the one who had known the pains and joys of motherhood.