Now, now that she was irrevocably gone, he knew.  He had made a hideous mistake; he had been led on by his vanity, led on and on until the trap was closed and sprung; and it was too late.  He sat there on a fallen tree with his head aching as if about to explode, with eyes, dry and burning and a great horror of heart-hunger sitting before him and staring at him.  In their sufferings from defeated desire the selfish expiate their sins.

He had forgotten his engagement to Theresa Howland, the wedding only two weeks away.  It suddenly burst in upon his despair like a shout of derisive laughter.  “I’ll not marry her!” he cried aloud.  “I can’t do it!”

But even as he spoke he knew that he could, and would, and must.  He had been a miserable excuse for a lover to Theresa; but Theresa had never had love.  All the men who had approached her with “intentions” had been fighting hard against their own contempt of themselves for seeking a wife for the sake of her money, and their efforts at love-making had been tame and lame; but Theresa, knowing no better, simply thought men not up to the expectations falsely raised by the romances and the songs.  She believed she could not but get as good a quality of love as there was going; and Ross, with his delightful, aristocratic indifference, was perfectly satisfactory.  Theresa had that thrice-armored self-complacence which nature so often relentingly gives, to more than supply the lack of the charms withheld.  She thought she was fascinating beyond any woman of her acquaintance, indeed, of her time.  She spent hours in admiring herself, in studying out poses for her head and body and arms, especially her arms, which she regarded as nature’s last word on that kind of beauty—­a not wholly fanciful notion, as they were not bad, if a bit too short between elbow and wrist, and rather fat at the shoulders.  She always thought and, on several occasions in bursts of confidence, had imparted to girl friends that “no man who has once cared for me can ever care for another woman.”  Several of her confidantes had precisely the same modest opinion of their own powers; but they laughed at Theresa—­behind her back.

Ross knew how vain she was.  To break with her, he would have to tell her flatly that he would not marry her.  “I’d be doing her no injury,” thought he.  “Her vanity would root out some explanation which would satisfy her that, whatever might be the cause, it wasn’t lack of love for her on my part.”  But—­To break off was unthinkable.  The invitations out; the arrangements for the wedding all made; quantities of presents arrived—­“I’ve got to go through with it.  I’ve got to marry her,” said Ross.  “But God help me, how I shall hate her!”