She had only accepted his ardent devotion to learn what riches and
luxury really meant, for which she had an uncontrollable longing, a
longing that almost devoured her! Night and day she thought of it, how
to get rich.
The aggressive poverty in which she had passed her earlier days, was
too hideous to dwell upon; she could not think of it without a shudder.
The idea of being poor again took her breath away. How could she ever
have consented to become the wife of a man who was poor? "Handsome but
poor! What an anomaly!" she said in an undertone, smiling sarcastically.
With bitter envy and scorn in her painfully contracted heart, she
saw the rich but most ugly looking women rolling by in their elegant
automobiles disdainfully glancing at her and her poor outfit. Often
enough when she was working,--engaged in the performance of her
household duties in the two small dark rooms of a tenement house,
without pure air, without light to brighten her beautiful face, she
cursed everything. This hovel her home! And she had the priceless gift
of beauty! She made up her mind not to stand it any longer.
The day came when she was seized by such a consuming desire to go
in pursuit of pleasure, to wear elegant, stylish clothes and feel
the admiring glances of the other sex resting upon her, that meeting
Mr. Ogden by accident and dazzled by his wealth, captivated by his
costly presents, she accepted his proposal to go with him forgetting
everything, even the sacred duty of a mother.