wall and strides past him without mercy. The politician knocks down and steps upon his opponent if he can mount by means of him. To say that "lovely woman," in her efforts for social recognition and supremacy, uses the same methods, would be to call forth a storm of protest, perhaps. A man's fist is a brutal weapon, yet its wounds are but surface bruises to the deep thrusts so quickly and cleverly inflicted by the woman who wages war on all that stands between her and her family's success, and whose battlefield is Society. Selfishness is her armor -- must necessarily be the armor behind which she gives and takes blows whose sting is not soon forgotten. Some time her armor becomes so battered it is more vulnerable; and in sorrow and bitter tears she will learn that the prize for which she has fought is but Dead Sea fruit -- but a will-o'-the-wisp which has lured her on till her feet are fast in the bog of loneliness, disappointment, and sorrow.

Falling in love, in his poverty, with a rich and beautiful woman who suffers him as long as he does not annoy her, and who scorns him when that time comes, Raphael is loved in turn by a young girl, nearly as poor as himself, whose devotion he unappreciatively accepts, blinded by in infatuation for the other. In despair, his last coin lost at the gaming-table, he is resolved to commit suicide by drowning. While waiting for darkness, to conceal his deed, he wanders into an antiquary's shop.