I admire and respect
you," he said. "To me, you must always appear the most beautiful of
women, whatever may be the nature of your surroundings."
"Yes, the most beautiful!" echoed Paulina, with passionate scorn. "You
men think that to praise a woman's beauty is to console her for every
humiliation. I have long held that which you call my beauty as the
poorest thing on earth, so little, happiness has its possession won for
me. I will tell you the story of my life. It is the only justification
I have."
"I am ready to listen. So long as you speak of yourself, your words
must have the deepest interest for me."
"I was reared amongst gamesters, Reginald Eversleigh," continued
Paulina Durski, with the same passionate intensity of manner, "My
father was an incorrigible gambler; and before I had emerged from
childhood to girlhood, the handsome fortune which should have been mine
had been squandered. As a girl the rattle of the dice, the clamour of
the _rouge et noir_ table were the most familiar sounds to my ears.
Night after night, night after night, I have kept watch at my own
window, and have seen the lighted windows of my father's rooms, and
have known that grim poverty was drawing nearer and nearer as the long
hours of those sleepless nights went by."
"My poor Paulina!"
"My mother died young, exhausted by the perpetual fever of anxiety
which the gambler's wife is doomed to suffer.
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