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Rh revealed to her could change her love to hate or scorn. Deepest pity filled her breast. She, to whose nature deeds of violence were altogether alien, could yet enter into and sympathise with the feelings of this sinner, whose fatal passions had sunk him in an abyss of crime. She pitied him, and clung to him, ready with words of comfort whenever such words might be spoken. Even in her silence the very touch of her hand told of consolation and of pity.

"I married my love in that quiet village church—married her under my assumed name of Gustave Georges; but the marriage was sound enough in law, and for me it meant a life-long bond. I had found Marie Prévol pure and innocent in the tainted atmosphere of a Parisian theatre, a creature incapable of guile. I honoured her for that innate purity which was independent of surroundings and circumstances, which had passed unscathed through the fiery-furnace of Bohemian Paris. The first years of our wedded life were full of happiness, steeped in a love which knew no change or diminution. My darling seemed to me, day by day, more adorable, and it may be that the secrecy of my double life, the long hours of severance, the narrow circle in which Marie and I lived when we were together—it may be that these circumstances, and the strangeness of our relations, intensified my passion, lending to our wedded bliss all the charm of mystery and romance. Ah, how sweet were our brief holidays at Biarritz or Pau, our wanderings in picturesque old Spain, far away from the beaten tracks, choosing mostly those places to which the world did not go! So far as it went, that life of ours was a perfect life; and I was fool enough to think that it would last for ever."

He sighed, and sank for some moments into a dreamy silence, his eyes fixed in a vision of that past existence.

"My wife had an intense delight in the theatre, and her successes there. She was never a famous actress; but her beauty had made her the rage. She had a birdlike soprano voice, and a bewitching manner. She was one of those adorable actresses who enchant their audience without ever losing their own individuality. She was always Marie Prévol; but the public wanted her to be nothing else. As I kept her entirely secluded from society for my own reasons, I could not deny her the pleasure of pursuing her profession. It pleased her to earn a handsome salary, to know that she was not entirely dependent on me, to be able to help her mother, who was a harpy, continually taking money from me. So she remained on the stage, to my destruction; for it was there that Maucroix saw her; and it was because she was an actress that he dared to pursue her with attentions which she at first repulsed, but which she afterwards encouraged.

"No, Dora, I will not dwell upon that hideous time, those days and nights of madness and despair. I saw her love going