If his dearest friend had sworn this to Lionel he would not have
believed it. His own senses he could not doubt. The faint,
feeble moonlight had as surely fallen on the fair face and golden
hair of Lillian Earle as the sun shone by day in the sky.
He threw away his cigar, and ground his teeth with rage. Had the
skies fallen at his feet he could not have been more startled and
amazed. Then, after all, all women were alike. There was in
them no truth; no goodness; the whole world was alike. Yet he
had believed in her so implicitly--in her guileless purity, her
truth, her freedom from every taint of the world. That fair,
spirituelle form had seemed to him only as a beautiful casket
hiding a precious gem. Nay, still more, though knowing and
loving her, he had begun to care for everything good and pure
that interested her. Now all was false and hateful.
There was no truth in the world, he said to himself. This girl,
whom he had believed to be the fairest and sweetest among women,
was but a more skillful deceiver than the rest. His mother's
little deceptions, hiding narrow means and straitened
circumstances, were as nothing compared with Lillian's deceit.
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