have told many lies since then."

She drank her coffee slowly, looking steadfastly into the fire, as if she saw in the wavering flame some reflection of another fire on another hearthstone.

"How good it is!" she said at last, putting her cup down. "How dreadfully good it is—the coffee and the fire, and the quiet room, and to be dry and warm and clean! How good it all is! And how little I thought of them when I had all these things!"

She got up and looked at a water-colour over the low mantelpiece.

"Madeira, isn't it?" she said. "I seem to remember that peculiar effect of the vivid purple of the Bougainvillea against the dim, cloudy purple of the hills behind."

"It is Madeira," I said. "I was there ten years ago. Perhaps you have read my little book, 'Beside the Bougainvillea'?"

"My husband died there," she said, looking fixedly at the drawing. "He died just before sunrise, and when it was over I remember looking out across the sea, past the great English man-of-war in the harbour, to those three little islands—I forget their names—and as the first level rays touched them, the islands and the ship all seemed to melt into half-transparent amethyst in a sea of glass, beneath a sky of glass. How calm the sea was—hardly a ripple! I felt that even he, weak as he was, could walk upon it. It was like daybreak in heaven, not on earth. And his long martyrdom was over. It seemed as if we were both safe home at last."

"Had he been ill long?"

"A long time. He suffered terribly. And I gave him morphia under the doctor's directions. And then, when he was gone—not at first, but after a little bit—I took morphia myself, to numb my own anguish and to get a little sleep. I thought I should go mad if I could not get any sleep. I had better have gone mad. But I took morphia instead, and sealed my own doom. But how can you tell whether I am speaking the truth? Well, it doesn't matter if you don't believe me. I am accustomed to it. I am never believed now. And I don't care if I'm not. I don't deserve to be. But I suppose you can see that I was not always a tramp on the highway. And, at any rate, that is what I am now, and what I shall remain, unless I drift into prison again, which God forbid, for I should suffocate in a cell after the life in the open air which I am accustomed to."

She shivered a little, as if she who seemed devoid of fear quailed at the remembrance of her cell.

"You are wondering how I have fallen so low," she said. "Do you remember Kipling's lines—