accustomed ring of your own, and you will know precisely what Roland Fanshaw felt, and all that he felt, when first Ilona became his own.

He had never removed the ring since that day on which he had last seen Helen and had first seen Ilona, so that the positive sensation was easily to be accounted for. The strange part of the matter was that neither in heart, mind, nor body did he feel anything more. It was as if that left hand little finger were the only self-conscious part about him. But, in a moment more, he started, held out his hands before him as if keeping off some monstrous presence, and exclaimed :

"What am I-what have I done?"

He was conscious of a great deal now. As if pursued by murderers seeking his life, he almost ran out of the house into the open air. It seemed strange to him that he was not followed; and yet what creatures, save those born of his own imagination, should pursue? He was certainly no coward by nature, and yet he was behaving like an abject coward, fleeing when no man pursued.

There is no use in thinking about what he felt within him or around him. To think about a thing one must know what the thing is, and that neither he nor any human being could have told. What he did is all that can be known. For a good two hours he walked right on, not heeding whither. It must have been from himself that he was flying, just as murderers have tried to fly from themselves, at once so rapid and restless was the flight, and so vain. But the life he had of late been leading had not conduced to bodily strength, and downright weariness set in. He found himself miles away to the north beyond what even yet can be called London. He was no less hungry and more thirsty than when, with six thousand pounds on his person, he had found himself unable to find food. Now, instead of returning to the luxuries he had left behind him, he contented himself with the bread and ale of the nearest tavern, in the character of an eccentric pedestrian who chose to tramp the country roads in clothes fit for the Row. Then, more slowly, and with eyes bent downward towards the dust at his feet, he turned towards home.

"Home!" he thought, with a sort of scorn. "Where am I going? Only to one place, if I am still so much as the ghost of a man."

Then, after a moment's hesitation, he strode on, a little more firmly than before.

In spite of his long wandering it was not late when he reached

the door of the house where Gustave Renouf lived with his daughter. Roland's heart did not beat as he climbed the steep stairs slowly. It is before, not after, the jury's "guilty" that the criminal's heart is alive enough to beat; after, it turns cold and dies. But in such death it may grow strong. Roland entered the room.

It might have been yesterday, except that there were no flowers. There sat Helen at work and, as usual, alone. That was fortunate, for else he might have found the saying of what he had to say doubly hard. But no; it was not like yesterday, for she did not come to his arms. Nor did he hold them open. He did not even see whether she started to see him, for he dared not raise his eyes.

"Helen," he said at last, "Helen, do not speak to me, do not look at me; only hear what I have to say. It is soon told, and it is due to you that you should know why you may not give me a word, a look, a thought, save of scorn, from this time forth for

She did not rise or attempt to speak. Why should he have hoped otherwise? He thrust such hope away, and forced himself to say on.

"I desired to become rich and great for your sake; I have become rich for the devil's and my own. How shall I tell you? Well, there is only one way. I will tell you the story of a— scoundrel. I won't even hint that I had become reckless, desperate, mad—'mad' is the very last name that any who know me would call me! Madmen shut themselves up with their books, and, penniless themselves, ask penniless girls to be their wives. That is not what I have done: I have been the sanest of the sane. I began my-rise-by cheating a cheat out of six thousand pounds; but those six thousand pounds had been cheated before my eyes and with my knowledge from my own old friend and schoolfellowa poor young fellow who had made them hardly and honestly, and had just come home from the other side of the world to make his old parents and the girl who loved him happy. I did not return them to him and say, Be warned. By fraud I won them and by fraud I kept them, while he, ruined and ashamed, went back to the place whence he had come. . . . God knows what has become of him now. So much for my beginning. I made an alliance with my fellow cheat, and used the money of poor Frank Standish and the luck some devil had lent me to the ruin of others-of all who came in my way. I flew at higher game-but I need not go into what you would not understand. But-oh, Helen, that I should have lived to say it I have been false to you. I will not say I have

never been false in my heart, my real self; it would sound like a lie. From that day to this I have been at another woman's feet, her slave, hoping to make her mine—of a woman whom I now hate as much as I love-no; I won't say that. I am not fit even to dream of your name. Now you know me, Helen. There is nothing left me but to go, to repay poor Frank and the rest I have wronged, and then-There is only one comfort. You will not break your heart for such as I. You will be happy, for you have never done wrong."

"You are rich! You are great !" cried Helen, rising and coming near. "Then it is all true! But-what in heaven's name does it matter how?"

It was Helen's voice; they were Helen's eyes. But the words! They were Ilona's, or else those of some friend disguised as Helen. He was not mad now; he was not in a dream, nor was she, unless the whole world is mad together. It was as if those whom we take for angels are truly demons, and as if all that we hold to be true, good, and pure is a lie. Roland fell back stricken, not with amaze, but with horror.

"I once felt just as you do now," said Helen calmly. "I believed in goodness and poverty and work and everything else of that kind. Well, you have been right and I have been wrong. What good has come of being honest and hardworking and poor? Why, it could not even keep us together! If you had not taken your friend's money somebody else would have had it, you may be sure; it is only like my father and the dominoes, only in a larger way. And the same with all those other people. If anybody is to become richer, somebody must be poorer, mustn't they? And if you are lucky, somebody must be unlucky; it is only the dominoes all over again. I am sorry if you have learned to like anybody better than me; but, of course, it would have been folly for you to have burdened yourself with a poor girl. I can guess who it is; it is Countess Lenska. I saw you with her to-day, and I saw her afterwards in her own house. Well, if you can win countesses, perhaps I can win Princes, Roland. When you started you were no richer than I. We will see who will be the richer in the end. Come; have courage! After all, why should we not forgive and forget and start again? I am not so poor as I seem."

She was even justifying his wrong-doing and his falsehood to himself-arguing, with the voice of reason, his conscience down. He had condemned himself, and that was terrible enough; but now a nameless horror held him dumb.

It may be that the sight of Helen as he had passed her in the carriage that day had dissipated his illusions and recalled him to his truer and better self, humbling him with remorse until it had become repentance; it may that she, having been driven to lose all faith in her lover, had lost faith in all goodness and honour besides. And so should I hold and believe without doubt, had not Roland's eyes been caught at that moment by an evil flame glowing on Helen's hand-the Opal ring that he had parted with that day, and that was now worn by her,

Nor till Roland had reached the old house in Courland Street did he remember that he had forsaken that dingy neighbourhood long ago. Since the ring had left his finger he had fallen back into the old lines of feeling, as well as of thought, so that old habits reasserted themselves. Indeed, until he had reached the door of his old room, he did not realise that he had no manner of right or business there. But he had not the heart to face the public streets again. When he had fled that day along the country roads, he was carrying only his own conscience on his back. Now he would have to bear Helen's, and he felt that, if he carried it out under the world's eyes, it would become a visible burden. It was evening, and how could he let the stars see that one of them had fallen?

Besides, it was needful that he, before he settled the rest of his affairs, and followed in the footsteps of Frank Standish to the other side of the world, should see his former neighbour, the wandering jeweller-should the latter have yet returned and explain how and when the lost Opal had come into his hands. The finding of it seemed but yesterday, though it had been many months ago. He longed to abase himself before some human creature, if only by way of penance for Helen. For himself, he now cared little. The fall of an angel throws into insignificance the fall of a man.

The notice had been removed from the door, which was unfastened. But he was disappointed in finding his former neighbour within. It seemed, as he entered the well-remembered room, that all the past had been but a shadow, and that he was still Roland, the student, come to snatch in talk a half-hour's rest between his evening and his midnight labours. At any rate, in this dark room, he could wait and

think-not over what he had to do at once, for there was no question about that, when he was rich enough to redeem much of the wrong he had done to all save to Helen-but over Helen herself, who, with the possession of the ring, appeared to have become possessed with the spirit which had spurred him into wrong. But the more he thought and thought, the less he could bring his mind to bear. It all seemed so impossible that into Helen's heart should have entered one thought of wrong. It was so much more hideous in a woman -so much more terrible in Helen than in all women

than in a man

and in all men.

How long he sat there in the dead silence and in the half-darkness he hardly knew. He reached no result, beyond the certainty that all these things were real, and in no wise a dream. First reparation, so far as it might ever be made, then despair, not merely of himself, but of the world. Thus life reached out before him. Even as Helen had felt, when she first knew her faithless, so now felt he. At last he heard a step upon the stair, and a hand upon the door.

"Monsieur Hagopian," asked a voice that made him tremble, "are you disengaged ?"

Could he not be safe from Helen's voice, from her presence, even here? And what could she want with Joseph Hagopian?

"Oh, it is you!" said she, coming into the room. "So you also have dealings with this Hagopian? All the better; you will help me from being taken in. But what a strange place, how dark and gloomy And you look so cold, and so grave-you make me afraid."

He could not help observing-indeed, he had observed it even when he had been with her before on that day-that, though her voice remained her own, she had acquired a choice of words and a turn of phrase that he had thought peculiar to Ilona. Her speech had once been simplicity itself-now it seemed as if Ilona were speaking with the voice of Helen. Thus, though the voice made a thousand memories quiver, the words were hateful to his very soul.

"It is not of me," he said, "that you need be afraid."

"There is nothing else that I fear! But why did you run away from me so soon? Did you think she would be jealous-that Countess? You will think twice of her when you know why I am here. You are one of us, so I may speak plainly, and get the benefit of all you know."

"One of you?"

"Yes-people who mean to be rich, whoever else may be poor,