him as I had known it in those few brief months before
our marriage. She had never felt the caress of his
voice, or the magnetism of his strange, smoldering eyes
glowing across the smoke-dimmed city room as I had felt
them fixed on me. No one had ever known what he had
meant to the girl of twenty, with her brain full of
unspoken dreams--dreams which were all to become glorious
realities in that wonder-place, New York.

How he had fired my country-girl imagination! He had
been the most brilliant writer on the big, brilliant
sheet--and the most dissolute. How my heart had pounded
on that first lonely day when this Wonder-Being looked up
from his desk, saw me, and strolled over to where I sat
before my typewriter! He smiled down at me, companionably.
I'm quite sure that my mouth must have been wide open with
surprise. He had been smoking a cigarette an
expensive-looking, gold-tipped one. Now he removed it
from between his lips with that hand that always shook a
little, and dropped it to the floor, crushing it lightly
with the toe of his boot. He threw back his handsome
head and sent out the last mouthful of smoke in a thin,
lazy spiral. I remember thinking what a pity it was that
he should have crushed that costly-looking cigarette,
just for me.

"My name's Orme," he said, gravely. "Peter Orme.
And if yours isn't Shaughnessy or Burke at least, then
I'm no judge of what black hair and gray eyes stand for."