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war, and I had never seen anything like her. I had lived so much out of England and I hadn’t followed the changes that were taking place among the young, and all the women I had known could be put into simple categories:—the chaste and the unchaste: the attainable and the unattainable;—and I hadn’t much faith in the latter unless they happened to be in love with somebody else. I had never conceived of a woman—a young woman—unprotected, without position or fortune or worldly asset of any kind, who could at once set the very highest value on herself and yet unhesitatingly give herself away. I had never conceived of a woman in love who had not a trace of the siren about her—and not a trace of the virtuous victim who bargains with her virtue for permanence and fidelity. Hester never allured and never bargained. She came to me because she loved me and thought no less well of herself for giving than of me for taking. The old hallmarks did not exist for her. I was a married man.—Did you know that I’d been married?—That’s a story that I won’t inflict on you. She’s dead, poor creature, and we pretty well hated each other before the end, though we began with a Tristram and Isolde romance.—I was perfectly frank with Hester and she took what I had to offer