condition she had learned to recognize--and fear. She locked her bedroom
door. When he discovered that, he was furiously angry; as I said before,
he was a big man, and he was very strong. He knocked out a panel, put his
hand through, and turned the key. When he reached her, he reminded her
that she had been perfectly willing to marry him--that she was his wife,
his property, anything you choose to call it; he struck her. The next
day she was very ill, and the child which should have been born three
months later came--and went--before evening. The next year she was not so
fortunate; her second baby was born at the right time--her husband was
away with another woman when it happened--a horrible, diseased little
creature with staring, sightless eyes. Thank God! it lived only two
weeks, and its mother, after a long period of suffering and agony during
which she felt like a leper, recovered again, in time to see her husband
die--after three nights, during which she got no sleep--of delirium
tremens, leaving her with over two million dollars to spend as she
chose--and the degradation of her body and the ruin of her soul to think
of all the rest of her life!"

"Sylvia!"--the cry with which Austin broke his long silence came from the
innermost depths of his being--"Sylvia, Sylvia, you shan't say such
things--they're not true. Don't throw yourself on the ground and cry that
way." He bent over her, vainly trying to keep his own voice from
trembling. "If I could have guessed what--telling this--this hideous
story would mean to you, I never should have let you do it. And it's all
my fault that you felt you ought to do it--partly because of those vile
speeches I made the other evening, partly because I've let you see how
wickedly discontented I've been myself, partly because you must have
heard me urging my own sister to make practically this same kind of a
marriage. Oh, if it's any comfort to you to know it, you haven't told me
in vain! Sylvia, do speak to me, and tell me that you believe me, and