distort the sweetest relationships, and too often make victims of those whose right it is to be cherished.

The social highway is lined with altars whose smoke of sacrifice never goes out, and the slain offerings are thickly strewn upon the road pressed by the feet of those that march over them in their eagerness to serve the goddess of selfishness.

Excess wears many faces. this disposition of the lesser human soul consequent upon the animal instincts within it, prevails also upon the intellectual plane until the higher human begins to develop and establish equilibrium. Selfishness and the intellectual egotist are found together. His love, his passionate, intense love, is invariably for self -- for himself in the loved one. Witness Raphael's remark at the conclusion of his story: "Let a young man meet with a woman who does not love him, or a woman who loves him too well, and his life is forever spoiled."

How forcibly does Balzac show the proneness of the undeveloped soul to believe its experiences undeserved misfortune; to look upon what others have or have not done as the cause of all its sufferings, the destroyer of it possibilities! But the higher soul, in its womanly aspect, as Pauline, looks quietly upon what it cannot hinder, and waits -- ever waits while ever ready.

"Pauline stood there as my living conscience," says Raphael, as he takes leave of the humble home made radiant by her selfless love.