sweetheart, only to be torn by suspicions that he no longer cares for
her and is marrying her only for her money. We leave her a prey to
thoughts of a life which, unconsciously, she has brought on herself.

John Norton might be called the born monk. He is, however, but the
male embodiment of that cultured selfishness of which Mildred Lawson
is the female expression. He is not a flirt. He takes life too
seriously to be that; but he takes it so seriously that there is only
room in the world for himself alone. He comes of a fine old English
stock, is rich, and is his own master. He treats his mother as a cold-
blooded English gentleman, with Norton's peculiar nature, would treat
a mother--with polite but firm disregard of her claims. He has enough
and to spare of will-power, but it is become degenerated into
obstinacy. He fails because he wants too much, because he is unsocial
at heart, and does not understand that life means giving as well as
taking. His sexual passion finds expression in a religious fanaticism
which is but the expression of utter selfishness, as all sexual
passion is. In the company of Kitty he has moments of exaltation, when
his degenerate passion scents the pure air of love; but he can never
let himself go. When, on one occasion, he so far forgets himself as to
allow his heart to be responsive to Kitty's natural purity and he
kisses her, he is so shocked at what he has done that he runs away and
leaves the girl to a terrible fate. We leave him also a prey to
thoughts of what he might have prevented. He, too, like Mildred
Lawson, must henceforth face a life of his own unconscious making.

Agnes Lahens is the victim of a heartless, selfish society in which
the abuse of love has made its world a desert and its products Dead
Sea fruit. Out of a sheer impulse for self-protection she flies to the
nunnery, which is ready to give her life at the price of her womanhood