love's wild, entrancing, ecstatic maze. To me he became not only the personification of manly beauty and strength, but the very type of human nobility, honour, and virtue. 

To think such rubbish about any man, one must of course have the fever very badly; and I had it so intensely that, when he paid me attentions which made other girls tremble with anger and envy, I was so happy that I even forgot to exult over them. I must have been very love sick for that. 

I came to laugh at it afterwards--or almost laugh--and to realize that it was an excellent discipline for my silly child's pride: but to learn the lesson I had to pass through the ordeal of fire and passion and hot scalding tears that go to the hardening of a young heart. 

He had been merely amusing himself at the expense of a "raw miss from the West;" and the knowledge came to me as suddenly as the squall will strike a yacht, all sails standing, and strew the proud white canvas a wreck on the waves. 

At a ball one night we had danced together as often as usual, and when, as we sat out a waltz, he had asked me for a ribbon or a flower, I had been child enough to let him see all my heart as I gave them to him. Love was in my eyes; and was answered by words and looks from him which set me in a very seventh heaven of ecstatic delight. 

Then, the next day, crash came the dream-skies all about me. 

I was riding in the Central Park and he joined me. I saw at once he was changed; and my glad smile died away at his constrained formal greeting. He struck the blow at once, with scarcely a word of preamble. 

"I am leaving for Europe to-morrow, Miss von Dreschler," he said. "I have enjoyed New York immensely." 

The chill of dismay was too deadly to be concealed. I gripped the pommel of the saddle with twitching, strenuous fingers. "You have been called away suddenly?" I asked; my instinct being thus to defend him even against himself. 

He paused, as if hesitating to use the excuse I offered. 

"No," he answered. "It has been arranged for weeks. These things have to be with us, you know." 

In a flash his baseness was laid bare to me; and the first sensation of numbing pain dumbed me. I had not then acquired the art of masking my feelings. But anger came to my relief, as I realized how he 

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