were highly sensational--as told by her devoted partizans, and warmly
denied by his and his outraged family (principally irate mother). They
sound like the fragments of a romance written by Bulwer, and with a
liberal touch of Lucile. It was the talk of the town, and many things
were said, and a few were done. I was silent and hopeful. My triumph was
near! She had done with him, and forever. He did not cut his handsome
throat! He did not do any of the thrilling but uncomfortable things done
by the usual rejected lover in the average novel--_but he came back
to me!_ Once more Gerome Meadows was my recognized lover, and the
people--the fickle people--began to whisper it about (greatly to my
satisfaction), that perhaps this very uncertain Mr. Meadows had always
loved me from the time his sister Kate and myself were school-girls
together. And furthermore, he had for a while yielded to the manifold
fascinations of that devilish brown-eyed beauty. In fact, he himself
told me a goodly number of just such little speeches; discoursed on the
difference between real love and mere fascination. He told me that I was
the only woman he ever could really love, and that he had for me a pure
and warm affection. Ah! how sweet were those declarations to my ear. But
not to my heart--it was closed against him.

I was not the woman he had known and halfway loved before--for I had
eagerly tasted deep and long of the Egyptian flesh-pots, and I refused
any other kind of social sustenance. I allowed him to believe that his
tardy return had routed all rivals from the field. I forced him to fancy
me to be so different from _that other woman_. I was, in truth, a
cool, quiet reaction. I coaxed him into believing me to be full of a
gentle, womanly purity. I made him blind to the fact that I was a
worldly woman, conscious of and ready to unhesitatingly use my
worldliness. I measured my powers aright--I could at my own sweet will
allow him, force him, coax him, make him _do any thing_. I cunningly