Anonymous - The Altar of Venus

Once located, I applied myself diligently to the task of learning the fundamentals of the business and at the end of the first year, was made assistant manager. During this period I had dedicated my time and interest almost ex-

clusively to the business and such amorous expansion as I permitted myself was confined to that class which is usually paid for by the hour or by the night. Fastidious tastes stood in the way of any extended relationships with the girls or women which I encountered is purely phys-* ical necessities, I remained heart whole and fancy free for something like a year and a half.

And then I met Edyth.

I found her in the unromantic, and prosaic atmosphere of a big department store-a sweet faced, modest, lovable girl of attractive personality voice, immediately set up in my heart that mysterious vibration which is a prelude to what we call love.

In the wiles and stratagems I employed and the prolonged courtship I paid her, before she finally surrendered her affections and something else to me, I shall not dwell. Suffice to say that eventually she gave up her employment, and we established ourselves in a pretty little flat in Kensington Gardens.

Of ardent and passionate nature, she unfolded like an exotic tropical blossom and enshrined with her memory are the recollections of many happy hours.

She had no vices, no eccentricities; she was just a wholesome normal, adorable girl, whose heart, starved for affection, responded with pas-

sionate ardor to my caresses, a harp which had but waited the touch of a master to give forth its sweetest strains.

Edyth had beenmarried, but had left her husband after a series of heart breaking disillusions. Because of the peculiarly hard divorce laws of Great Britain, and the unique circumstances under which she had separated from her husband she had never attempted to secure a divorce and presumed herself to be still legally bound to a man she nad not seen in over two years.

The events which preceeded her separation from this man as she related them to me were so startling that despite the fact this biography was intended to refer only to my own experiences, I cannot bring myself to deprive my readers of their telling. I shall, therefore, step out of the picture for an interval, to transcribe the story, exactly as Edyth, with dramatic realism, averted eyes and frequent blushes as some of the more succulent details were recounted, told it to me. And, may I observe that in the telling, she employed a few words which I never previously, or aferwards either for that matter, heard fall from her lips.

I was eighteen years old when Vernon began to pay me attentions. He was five years older than I, and in my inexperience he seemed to me the epitome of masculine perfection. Nice looking, well groomed, gallant and attentive, he quickly captured my youthful affections. When he proposed marriage to me, my parents, solicitous for my welfare, interposed some objections for Vernon had nothing but an unimportant clerkship, and evidently had not impressed them as favorably as he had me. But this being the only tangible objection they could present against our marriage, I laughed it to scorn, and when they realized that my heart was set, they withdrew their opposition, and we were married.

I was deeply in love with my handsome husband and for a short time was ideally happy.

My first shock came when I discovered that a beautiful diamond engagement ring he had slipped on my finger, was unpaid for, and that the installments due on it were sadly in arrears. The small salary which he received had, before our marriage, sufficed for his own necessities but as he had saved nothing we were compelled to adopt methods of strictest economy. Before marriage I had been accustomed to a comfortable living, and generous parents had always provided me with money to purchase the little luxuries of dress and toilet so dear to the feminine heart. After marriage, my father con-

tinued to give me small sums destined to my own personal use, but the pressure of domestic obligations was such that I was obliged to use this money for household expenses. The former luxuries were sadly missed, but still deeply enamoured with, my husband, I would not havp given him up for all the treasures of India,

But, alas, the sweetest illusions of life are those most prone to rapid destruction.

The installments due on the ring had mounted to a figure which in our actual state of finances was apalling, and to save Vernon from the embarrassment of constant dunning, threats, I silently withdrew it from my finger, and handed it to him with request that it be returned.

This was but the beginning, and before we had been married half a year, I began to see life through less rosy spectacles. The sad realization that the idol of my girlish affections was far from being all I had so confidently assumed, was forced upon me.

Vernon was of weak character and lacked the manly agressive qualities which women require in the men they love, and without which, respect and admiration are impossible. Marriage, instead of developing these latent if at all existent qualities was having just the contrary effect upon him and day by day he was becoming accustomed to lean more on me. The money

given me by my father was now accepted as a matter of-course as being our main dependence in household finances, and his own salary was devoted almost entirely to personal expenditures.

I still loved Venon-but instead of loving him with respect and admiration, it was a pitying love-more as a mother might love a weak and petulant child.

When we had been married about a year, Vernon lost his position, and as the weeks went by, without a serious effort on his part to find another, I was obliged to seek employment. In this I was successful and though the pay was small between it and what my father gave me we managed to live.

Vernon spent most of the time lying around the house, smoking innumerable cigarettes and reviling his "rotten luck" as he called it. If I reproved him for his failure to make a more determined effort to improve his circumstances he became cross and irritable, and would leave the house, to return at a late hour of the night.

Now appeared upon the scene a Mr. George Tucker.

This individual came home one evening with Vernon, and was introduced to me as an old friend of my husband's. Mr. Tucker, though not of displeasing appearance, was an uncultured man several years older than Vernon, addicted to flashy clothing, and apparently well supplied with money. From the moment I saw this man I felt an instinctive dislike for him. His conversation was in bad taste, and the first evening he spent with us, he eyed me incessantly, assuring my husband that had he known what a "topping little woman" he had he would not have delayed so long in paying his respects.

After this Mr. Tucker's visits came in rapid succession. Occasionally he invited us out to cafes, cinematographic shows and cabarets, always with a vulgar, and ostentatious display of money. I would gladly have avoided his hospitality but Vernon insisted that I accompany them and reprimanded me for any display of coolness toward the man.

He assured me that Mr. Tucker was a person of wealth and influence engaged in many prosperous enterprises and that the cultivation of his friendship was bound to result in a solution of his own difficulties, and that I was therefore to treat him with the greatest consideration. I could not imagine what kind of business the man was engaged in-and doubted whether it could be anything of a very respectable nature, but when I questioned Vernon on this score, his answers were evasive-Mr. Tucker's interests were many and varied. Horse racing I found out later. Within a short space of time his visits

were of nightly occurence, and when we did not go to a show or a cafe, he sat around until eleven or twelve o'clock, listening to Vernon and looking at me. My intuition coupled with the many more or less frank attentions Mr, Tucker paid me told me that he was more interested in me than in my husband. There are things which a woman instinctively knows and though I was innocent and unsuspecting to a fault I simply "felt" the things this man was thinking as he sat in our little parlor his eyeis devouring my every movement, and I was astonished that Vernon did not preceive what was to me so obvious.