I hurried out into the street.
There I noticed that a tall young man, who had been staring at me, with a row of gold teeth accenting a diabolical smile, had followed me from the store. After I had walked half a block to find my carriage, he spoke to me.
“I can sell you something just as good,” he whispered by my side. “I do a little quiet business in it. It’s not for yourself, is it?”
“No,” I said, trembling from head to foot. “It is for an unfortunate woman, whose name must not be disclosed.”
“Call her She,” he suggested with a leer. “Here is an address. Send a messenger boy whenever you like. Every one thinks I am a perfume manufacturer.”
This was the opening of greater comfort to me; my terror of detection was lessened. As time passed I found that my moral sense was being dulled, little by little. I was fulfilling my destiny. I was living according to my arrangement of brain cells. In spite of his warning—or perhaps solely because of it—the fears of my foster father were realized. I was I!
Four weeks ago came a new thing. It burst like dynamite. It gripped my heart. It felt along the chords of my womanhood. I could not escape its presence. It cried to me in the darkness. It walked beside me in the sunlight.