every reason to expect to see me very soon again, and I had inwardly resolved never to see her again if I could help it.  I did keep away, and then luck would have it that I met her taking a walk one snowy afternoon.  I suspected she had come out to get away from the remembrance of me, as I had to get away from the desire to see her; and she was so moved by seeing me that I could not help showing her that I cared for her, and perhaps seemed to care more than I did.  It was a sore temptation, and I yielded to it.  Wrong?  Do you think I don’t know that it was wrong?  But the worst is to come.  I walked back with her, and an accident led to our having one of those conversations that people have when they are under the influence of emotion and cannot give it vent in its natural way, but must do something or talk.  If I could have put my arms about her and kissed her, we could have got on without words:  as it was, I said I hardly know what, and she, being very much in earnest and very unsophisticated, showed me how much she cared for me.  I vow, George, if I had had a moment to think, to gather my self-control—­But I had not, and so we ended by my finding her arms round my neck, after all.  I rushed away with hardly a word, and walked and walked, and thought and thought.  The next day comes a note from her—­what one would call a manly, straightforward acknowledgment that she had led me into a position that was an unfair one, and that she regretted it.  Nothing franker or more generous could have been conceived, but somehow it roused within me the impulse to make her conscious of the weakness of her sex.  My masculine conceit rose and demanded an opportunity of self-assertion.  I went to her, and she seemed more attractive than ever.  Her independence and self-reliance nettled me, and I was mean enough to yield to the desire to see if she could resist me.  But I was richly punished, for the knowledge rolled over me like a wave that she loved me, and I left her, stung by the consciousness of having taken an unworthy advantage of a simple and trustful nature.  I know that this is high tragedy, and will meet with your displeasure.  I can hear you say, “Confound you, Harry! why don’t you marry her?”

Very easy to say; but look at the situation, which is not so simple as you probably think.  Of course any girl of my own class would never build an edifice of eternal and sacred happiness on such a foundation as a few warm looks and eloquent words, or even a caress, might furnish.  In plain words, neither she nor I would think marriage a necessary or even likely sequence to such a preamble.  But it is different with Miss Linton.  I am sure, I am confident—­laugh if you like—­that she has never given any man what she has given me, either in degree or kind.  Her eccentric notions about women’s nature and position would protect her from tampering with her own feelings or those of another; and then, too, there has been so much hard reality, so much serious business,