brought me in money--only a few pounds, you know, but enough
to pay for cigars and such petty pleasures. It was in my second
season that the tide turned. Of course you have heard of my
marriage?"

"No, I never heard anything about it."

"Yes, I married, Villiers. I met a girl, a girl of the
most wonderful and most strange beauty, at the house of some
people whom I knew. I cannot tell you her age; I never knew it,
but, so far as I can guess, I should think she must have been
about nineteen when I made her acquaintance. My friends had
come to know her at Florence; she told them she was an orphan,
the child of an English father and an Italian mother, and she
charmed them as she charmed me. The first time I saw her was at
an evening party. I was standing by the door talking to a
friend, when suddenly above the hum and babble of conversation I
heard a voice which seemed to thrill to my heart. She was
singing an Italian song. I was introduced to her that evening,
and in three months I married Helen. Villiers, that woman, if I
can call her woman, corrupted my soul. The night of the wedding
I found myself sitting in her bedroom in the hotel, listening to
her talk. She was sitting up in bed, and I listened to her as
she spoke in her beautiful voice, spoke of things which even now
I would not dare whisper in the blackest night, though I stood
in the midst of a wilderness. You, Villiers, you may think you
know life, and London, and what goes on day and night in this
dreadful city; for all I can say you may have heard the talk of
the vilest, but I tell you you can have no conception of what I
know, not in your most fantastic, hideous dreams can you have