"It was disappointing work—trying to find employment, and I could not make enough to live on decently. I had never had to be very careful of money before, and I did not know how. He advised me, and helped me, cheered me all he could, and we ate supper together every night.
"I was making a few francs a week trimming hats, and when we began telling our experiences of the day those little suppers were almost merry. I was learning to hate my husband with a hate that will be with me till I die," and the glow of her dark eyes put the seal of truth on the words, "and when John—my Englishman—told his jokes and blunders, the pain of the longing for my boy did not hurt so much.
"Then I lost my miserable position, and it was days before I got another, although it was a better one when I did find it. During that time he was even more thoughtful and attentive and did not give me a chance to feel hopeless very long.
"The night, after I went to work again, we were sitting in the room where I had lain ill and he was telling me, with many laughs, about a picture that a fellow student was painting. As I watched his clean, handsome face and listened to his cheery talk I thought of all that he had done for me—that he had asked for nothing and received nothing but my empty words of gratitude—and my eyes filled with tears. The next moment I was kneeling before his chair, kissing his hands....
"His story stopped with a gasp, and I felt him tremble. Then he drew his hands away and raised me up to him and I kissed his lips and eyes and hair again and again. And ... that night ... I gave him ... all I had ... to give!...
"He never really loved me, but he was happy with me for a long time, and when he went back to England he took me with him. His home was only a few hours' ride from London, where he found apartments for me, and he was with me more than he was at home.
"Finally his visits were not so frequent and regular and they kept falling off, until once I did not see him for nearly three weeks. When he came he told me he had to tell me something that he was sure would hurt me, but he couldn't help it. He had fallen in love with an English girl, whom he had known all his life, and hoped to marry her; so he would have to break with me. He was always very liberal in money matters, and he wanted to keep on sending me the same allowance that he had given me when I settled in London. But I was too proud—then—to take it. I gathered together what money I had saved, packed my clothes and left that day.
"I took a cheap room and started out to find work again. I was given a place as clerk in a millinery store and by living as carefully as I could I did not have to draw often on my savings. But I had to draw on them a little and I was beginning to feel reckless, when an American theatrical man, who was spending part of the summer in England, came into the store one day o buy some ladies' gloves. I waited on him, and—well, in a few days I left my cheap room, and that fall I went back to New York with him.
"He wasn't as careful of my feelings as the Englishman was——You'll find that out, too, my girl," she broke off, with a grin of drunken cynicism. "After the first two or three, your lovers don't think much about your feelings. He left me destitute in less than a month after we got to New York!
"I tried to get work but I couldn't. The woman where I roomed took all of my clothes, except those had on, to pay for my room, and turned me out. I walked the streets all that night and the next day without anything to eat, and the next night stopped a well-dressed man and asked him if he could give me enough money to get some food. He walked on as if he had not heard me, and then next instant a man stepped out of a doorway and told me I was under arrest!