such a one may find that he has still some need of fasting and
praying. The particular temptation which overcame me was this
picture of the bride-to-be. I wanted to see her, and I went and
stood for hours in a crowd of curious women, and saw the wedding
party enter the great Fifth Avenue Church, and discovered that my
Sylvia's hair was golden, and her eyes a strange and wonderful
red-brown. And this was the moment that fate had chosen to throw
Claire Lepage into my arms, and give me the key to the future of
Sylvia's life.

3. I am uncertain how much I should tell about Claire Lepage. It is
a story which is popular in a certain sort of novel, but I have no
wish for that easy success. Towards Claire herself I had no trace of
the conventional attitude, whether of contempt or of curiosity. She
was to me the product of a social system, of the great New Nineveh
which I was investigating. And later on, when I knew her, she was a
weak sister whom I tried to help.

It happened that I knew much more about such matters than the
average woman--owing to a tragedy in my life. When I was about
twenty-five years old, my brother-in-law had moved his family to our
part of the world, and one of his boys had become very dear to me.
This boy later on had got into trouble, and rather than tell anyone
about it, had shot himself. So my eyes had been opened to things
that are usually hidden from my sex; for the sake of my own sons, I
had set out to study the underground ways of the male creature. I
developed the curious custom of digging out every man I met, and
making him lay bare his inmost life to me; so you may understand
that it was no ordinary pair of woman's arms into which Claire
Lepage was thrown.