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314 How could I tell then that it would be all a lie?"

The thoughts floated through her mind, leaning there wearily against the lattice, while the early wind of the warm dawn stirred the half-opened scarlet blossoms of the japonica twining round it. But she was too integrally proud to seek refuge or exculpation in self-excuses even in her solitary reverie.

"Yet that is but half the truth." she mused, while her eyes still unconsciously followed the sweep of the sea-birds out to sea. "I was sinned against then, in the first, but it has been my own wrong since. I have kept to error long since I have known it to be error. I have loved my power even while I despised its means and its ends. I have felt the intoxication of hazard till I have let it entangle me beyond recal. I have known the evil I did, yet I have not paused in it when I might. I have seen the fatal issue of so much, and I have gone on and on. I have bound them, I have blinded them, I have despoiled them, I have taken their strength and their manhood, their faith and their courage, their wealth and their genius, and ruined them all. I have spared none of them. I have betrayed so many. That has not been done in ignorance—that