Koller, who, in consideration of leaving her a comfortable fortune, had made her life a torment upon earth. Just when she was preparing to enjoy her liberty she had found herself enslaved by her own act as it were. Sometimes she asked herself contemptuously what Pembroke could give her if she married him, in exchange for liberty which she prized, and answered herself with the wisdom of the world. Again she reasoned with herself and got for answer the wildest folly a girl of sixteen could imagine. With him was everything—without him was nothing. And his indifference piqued her. She truly believed him quite callous to any woman, and she had often heard him say that he had no intention of marrying. Pembroke, returning to the life of a country gentleman after four years' campaigning, followed by a time of thoughtless pleasure, mixed with the pain of defeat, of the misery of seeing Miles forever wretched, broken in fortune, though not in spirit, found Madame Koller's society quite fascinating enough. But he was not so far gone that he did not see the abyss before him. On the one hand was money and luxury and pleasure and idleness and Madame Koller, with her blonde hair and her studied graces and her dramatic singing—and on the other was work and perhaps poverty, and a dull provincial existence. But then he would be a man—and if he married Madame Koller he would not be a man. It is no man's part to live solely for any woman, and nobody knew that better than French
