"Only that instinct warned them that this woman was not a friend. I, myself, in spite of my age, felt a marked attraction, as all men did. The appeal of sex in this woman was overpowering, although I looked in vain for the evidences of a passionate nature; physically she was normal, a slight valvular trouble of the heart I fancy, from what I heard, but nothing more. She had left a good home to travel about with a rather dissipated party, all of whom were of much coarser fibre than herself. I later had a long conversation with the young man, who had spent in a few weeks a small fortune upon her. He loved her in his way. She traded upon his love, but I am convinced that she never rewarded it. I happened to come upon her one day as she lay asleep on the sand; her face was like a mirror, reflecting the thoughts that were running through her mind. At first I saw a fierce sexual passion that frightened me; then as that passed another nature seemed to claim her, and her look became so pure, so innocent, that I found myself instinctively raising my hat and standing bareheaded in the sun. Wave after wave of feeling passed over her sensitive features, good following bad, purity following lust, the innocence of a child following the look seen only on the face of one to whom all innocence is a thing to laugh at. Doctor, I saw on that girl's face what one might almost call a struggle between good impulses, inherited perhaps from a pure mother, nurtured no doubt in an honest home, and the evil of a nature in which, when she was conscious, there was no spark of decency or honor left. It was like looking on at the struggles of a divided soul, and slowly seeing the defeat of the good, the triumph of the evil."
"This is indeed a terrible case," exclaimed Dr. Crossett. "What was the end?"
"What the real end will be one can only guess," replied Mr. Miller. "The end, so far as this episode of her life is concerned, began by a brutal killing of my little granddaughter's dog, quite the most dreadful scene I ever witnessed, and ended by her leaving the hotel in the company of a man, who for her sake forgot the daughter whom he loved with a most unusual affection and, blinded by the power of this creature's animal sex appeal, made himself a laughing stock to his acquaintances and a sorrow to his friends. The father disgraced in his old age, the dupe of this girl who was but little older than the daughter he left ashamed and heart-broken. Two men, one a young life-guard, the other the fellow with whom she left her home, each of them she left with good cause to remember her, and left with a poorer opinion of the world and a bitterness against all women that will in the end help on the evil she created in their hearts. To my little grandchild she brought her first knowledge of the wickedness of the world. To all whom she met she brought a sorrow; upon all whom she left she left a trace of her own unworthiness."