Page:Richard Marsh--The goddess a demon.djvu/154

142 are occasions when killing is not alone the best, but the only cure.

But I have had nothing to do with women. I have never been on familiar terms with one of them. I have always been aware that they are better than I, and that consciousness has made me shy of them, as of a church. But while one knows that a church is a place for sinners, one's sense of decency tells one that evil ought not to come into contact with a woman. So I have kept clear. Until that night.

Now Providence alone knew what had happened. Since I had seen her standing in the moonlight at my window, the foundations of my life seemed to have been going under. It was absurd; yet true. What could she care for such as I—an adventurer from the four comers of the world, soiled with something of the grime from each of them. What right had I to think of such as she—a young girl, in the first fulness of her wondrous beauty, mentally, morally, socially far above my reach; the idol of the town, with, at her feet, some of the greatest in the land. It was midsummer madness; which, in my case, was the less excusable since, for me, it was the time of autumn.

But she had called me "John." That was in her hour of sorrow, of which I had taken advantage. The hour would pass, and then I should