So many were the affairs that she had that there is no Solomon wise enough to tell how or when the first one began. All that is known is that she dressed in silks that were costly enough for a real queen, and which smelled of the spices and perfume of the Orient.
When I say costly, I mean from a money standard. They were more costly than that, so far as she was concerned personally, for in the end they cost her her life, and if she is not dead yet they certainly cost her happiness, which really amounts to the same thing.
For a while she lived furiously, with anything she wanted for the asking. Fine clothes, fine jewels, and money to spend is part of every woman’s life.
More than that, it is a keystone.
Besides, she was the most prominent woman in all the Quarter. For her that was fame and glory enough.
Had she been placed, by a fortunate move, somewhere else on the chess-board of life, her fame might have been more secure, but what difference does that make, so long as she was satisfied?
It wasn’t long before her real life began, when her steps, instead of being on the level or upward, traced their gradual way downward.
That was inevitable in that case, just as it is in other cases where constancy is an unknown virtue.
She passed from hand to hand like the chattel that she was. She didn’t even consider the proposition of the highest bidder, and start a hoard in some secret place which would have been a life raft to her in the turbulent days to come.
She lived on promises, and those are false things which fall to bits before adverse winds and threatening weather. Her spirits rose and fell in an inverse ratio to the rising and setting of the sun, and she took no heed of the days to come. The seed of thrift failed to find lodgment in her being.