It seemed terrible to her that she could at once be in love with one man
and enjoy the kisses of another. She had heard of girls who were thus,
and had for them the contempt which they deserved. And yet it seemed
that she was one of them; neither better nor worse. What Barbara did not
realize was, that in the first place she was not really in love with
anybody and never had been, and that it was not she herself who enjoyed
being kissed by a man to whom she was indifferent, neither liking nor
loathing, but nature, which for reasons, or perhaps only whims, of its
own, tempts the cell to divide and the flower to go to seed.

Through the tangle of her love affairs Wilmot Allen threaded a path of
hope, despair, and cynicism. There were times when she seemed to have a
return of her childhood infatuation for him; there were times when he
feared that in one of her moments of impressionable enthusiasm she would
marry some other man in haste, and repent at leisure. And there were the
cynical intervals, when it seemed to him that he could do without her,
and that nothing was worth while but enjoyment, both base and innocent,
and pleasure.

During Wilmot's junior year at New Haven, his father's sensational,
dissipated, and stock-gambling career came to a sudden end. There was
even a shadow on the name. He had done something _really_ discreditable,
something of course to do with money; since a man who is _merely_ a
gambler, a drunkard, and a Don Juan may with ease keep upon good terms
with society.

Wilmot Allen failed, at least without honor, filled himself full of
brandy, cocked a forty-five-calibre revolver, put the muzzle in his
mouth, pulled the trigger, blew off the back of his head, and was