and a desire for notoriety.  She had a facility in writing sentimental poetry, which had been efficacious in her matrimonial confidences, but which editors of magazines and newspapers found to be shallow and insincere.  To my astonishment, she remained unaffected by this, as she was equally impervious to the slights and sneers that continually met us in society.  At last the inability to pay one of her former husband’s claims brought to me a threat and an anonymous letter.  I laid them before her, when a scene ensued which revealed the blindness of my folly in all its hideous hopelessness:  she accused me of complicity in her divorce, and deception in regard to my own fortune.  In a speech, whose language was a horrible revelation of her early habits, she offered to arrange a divorce from me as she had from her former husband.  She gave as a reason her preference for another, and her belief that the scandal of a suit would lend her a certain advertisement and prestige.  It was a combination of Messalina and Mrs. Jarley”—­

“Pardon!  I remember not a Madame Jarley,” said the priest.

“Of viciousness and commercial calculation,” continued Hurlstone hurriedly.  “I don’t remember what happened; she swore that I struck her!  Perhaps—­God knows!  But she failed, even before a western jury, to convict me of cruelty.  The judge that thought me half insane would not believe me brutal, and her application for divorce was lost.

“I need not tell you that the same friends who had opposed my marriage now came forward to implore me to allow her to break our chains.  I refused.  I swear to you it was from no lingering love for her, for her presence drove me mad; it was from no instinct of revenge or jealousy, for I should have welcomed the man who would have taken her out of my life and memory.  But I could not bear the idea of taking her first husband’s place in her hideous comedy; I could not purchase my freedom at that price—­at any price.  I was told that I could get a divorce against her, and stand forth before the world untrammeled and unstained.  But I could not stand before myself in such an attitude.  I knew that the shackles I had deliberately forged could not be loosened except by death.  I knew that the stains of her would cling to me and become a part of my own sin, even as the sea I plunged into yesterday to escape her, though it has dried upon me, has left its bitter salt behind.

“When she knew my resolve, she took her revenge by dragging my name through the successive levels to which she descended.  Under the plea that the hardly-earned sum I gave to her maintenance apart from me was not sufficient, she utilized her undoubted beauty and more doubtful talent in amateur entertainments—­and, finally, on the stage.  She was openly accompanied by her lover, who acted as her agent, in the hope of goading me to a divorce.  Suddenly she disappeared.  I thought she had forgotten me.  I obtained an