Four silly words kept pounding at my brain like little devils keeping time to a relentless, monotonous engine.

"He has a wife. He has a wife. He has a wife.” "And what of that?" said I to the beating, strumming, machine-like little imps. "Miriam is happy. She must be happy. It is her right."

Miriam's voice now sounded far away, my inner self was talking so loudly to those invisible tormentors: "Prudy dear, please don't look like that. I am not a criminal, really. When you love, as I pray some day you may, you will understand and love me just as well."

The devils beat louder than ever, “He has a wife,” and then I knew they had said it aloud through my lips.

"Yes," answered Miriam more gently than ever, "he has, but legal ties are not always those of happiness. I have thought of that too, but Bob has assured me that for years Mrs. Idolized has only been a dear friend to him, thoroughly, almost selfishly, wrapped up in her children, quite to the exclusion of his welfare or life."

"Her children?" I asked mechanically.

"Well, his too, of course, but she usurps them as if they did not belong to him. You see they were married when both were young, before they knew their own hearts, and if they have discovered that they were mistaken, and she found contentment in her children while he still longed for a companionship she

could not give him, how is he to blame when another woman brings to him an undivided love which can fill his life, if he accepts it; especially since she is willing to give it even under these circumstances."

No, no, we will not blame him. The man we love is never to blame. We may sin in loving him, but our "king can do no wrong."

Miriam seemed to see that she was gaining ground and continued softly:

“We are so apt, as individuals, to shut ourselves up in a neatly woven cocoon of selfishness and look at the lives of others from the narrow confines of our ideas of virtue. Life, in reality, is complex and broad, and no one personality is capable of directing the temperament of another. This, we may go further and say, is true of communities and countries. What seems to be moral and legal to one nation is considered immoral and illegal in another. Take for instance, the marriage tie as we view it and as it is established in, let us say Turkey. In the latter country it is considered an honor to be a concubine, here we would name it a disgrace. These things are purely as we train ourselves to accept them. But life holds so much of genuine happiness if we will only come out of our cocoons and, like the butterfly, soar to heights above, beyond conventionalities; look with a broader vision, down from the stars, not up from the mire. Ah, Prudy, be big, be happy! some day you will learn that to love as I do breaks every barrier in life away, and makes one wish to take the whole world with her

to share her bliss, that it leaves no room for hate, malice, nor petty criticism of the lives of others."

How long she continued in this line of argument I do not know. The minutes, hours slipped by, and I sat as one charmed, enthralled. At last she rose in her lavender loveliness as if it were time for me to go. Like one in a dream and thoroughly hypnotized by the force of her animal spirits, bubbling, palpitating, physical, I threw myself into this goddess' arms, looking upon her as something beyond and above me and mere earth, an exalted being who had soared in realms of æsthetic bliss, and gathered, from mental heights, a light of reason far beyond my mundane limited comprehension. Clinging to her, I wept, absorbing, imbibing, and drinking in something of the atmosphere of the love which exalted her; she soothed and comforted me as a great, noble mother might have done, murmuring that she fully and freely forgave me for my doubts and hard thoughts and when I finally said good-night it was with a sobby, yet happy, excitement such as a child feels when the wrong doing and punishment have been wiped away with a kiss, and I was gigglingly, delightedly conscious, as I closed the door, that those suggestive, peeping, cunning little Turkish slippers encased two beautiful white bare feet.

CHAPTER XV.

WINKERS.

Before I plunge deeply into the next few years which embrace my term (let me be frank) as a willing accessory to an association I knew to be illegal and based solely on physical emotions and passions, let me dissertate for a moment upon the two classes that I have found constitute the personnel of my fascinating and alluring, yet undoubtedly culpable, profession.

Of this body theatrical I maintain on the basis of twenty years' association, that it is divided into two elements; one part, two-thirds of them deliberate moral transgressors, the other part, one-third, what, for want of a better term, I am forced to call Winkers. We are not, as a whole, moral law breakers, but we are at all times, in every situation, silent accessories to sin in others; not only failing to rebuke or condemn it, we even smile and condone, pretending sullenly not to see it and exclaiming vigorously and loudly that it does not exist. In other words we wink at it, because, largely, I suppose, in ninety-five cases out of one hundred, it gives us our daily bread. To illustrate, in Mr. Idolized's company were a man and woman, husband and wife, what we call a model couple; of apparently good birth; strictly attentive to their business and their own affairs; reliable in their

work; in fact capable artists both. Yet the actions of their associates were perfect in their eyes. The lady in favor with the management was always "such a dear girl"; the lawless, unfaithful husband who made it possible that their salary came to them every week (through the force of his animal magnetism on a susceptible female public) was a "dear good boy" at all times, no matter how often he changed his mistresses. This wife, a motherly woman, deported herself with great dignity, the husband was of gentlemanly bearing, but with a too patent "trying to please the mighty" air to be exactly pleasant; a sort of subservience to powers that be, an element which smacked of the sleek variety and expressed itself in a constant "Yes, Mr. Idolized"; "No, Mr. Idolized"; "Yes, Miss Merriworld"; "At your service, Miss Merriworld"; which became very irritating even to those whom it was intended to flatter.

This couple is not an isolated case by any manner of means. I found them first bowing to and patronizing "that dear girl Miriam" in a strictly firstclass organization, but I have come in contact with the same species even down to the ten, twenty and thirty cent repertoire companies; the same devoted couples, in whom deceit is possibly the largest element of their compositions, each weak in the characteristics that dare to battle for the right and willing to accept the prevailing conditions for the sake of peace and a prosperous season; hiding always behind the very convenient slogan: