’You were quite right, my darling.  Do not look so miserable.  Max would only honour you the more for your truthfulness.’

‘Yes, but he knew me better than I knew myself,’ she whispered.  ’When he begged to speak to me again I wanted to refuse, but he would not let me.  He asked me—­and there were tears in his eyes—­not to be so hard on him, to let him judge for us both in this one thing.  He pressed me so, and he looked so unhappy, that I gave way at last, and said that in a year’s time he might speak again.  I remember telling him, as he thanked me very gratefully, that I should not consider him bound in any way; that I had so little hope to give him that I had no right to hold him to anything; if he did not come to me when a year had expired, I should know that he had changed.  There was a gleam in his eyes as I said this that made me feel for the first time the strength and purpose of a man’s will.  I grew timid and embarrassed all at once, and a strange feeling came over me.  Was I, after all, so certain that I should never love him?  I could only breathe freely when he left me.’

‘Yes, dear, I understand,’ I returned soothingly, for she had covered her face with her hands, as though overpowered with some recollection.

‘Ursula,’ she whispered, ’he was right.  I had never thought of such things.  I did not know my own feelings.  Before three months were over, I knew I could give him the answer he wanted.  I regretted the year’s delay; but for shame, I would have made him understand how it was with me.’

’Could you not have given a sign that your feelings were altered, Gladys? it would have been generous and kind of you to have ended his suspense.’

’I tried, but it was not easy; but he must have noticed the change in me.  If I were shy and embarrassed with him it was because I cared for him so much.  It used to make me happy only to see him; if he did not speak to me, I was quite content to know he was in the room.  I used to treasure up his looks and words and hoard them in my memory; it did not seem to me that any other man could compare with him.  You have often laughed at my hero-worship, but I made a hero of him.’

I was so glad to hear her say this of my dear Max that tears of joy came to my eyes, but I would not interrupt her by a word:  she should tell her story in her own way.

’Etta had spoken to me long before this.  One day when we were sitting over our work together, and I was thinking happily about Max—­Mr. Cunliffe, I mean.’

‘Oh, call him Max to me,’ I burst out, but she drew herself up with gentle dignity.

’It was a mistake:  you should not have noticed it.  I could never call him that now.’  Poor dear! she had no idea how often she had called him Max in her feverish wanderings.  ’Well, we were sitting together,—­for Etta was nice to me just then, and I did not avoid her company as I do now,—­when she startled me by bursting into tears and reproaching me for not having told her about Mr. Cunliffe’s offer, and leaving her to hear it from Giles; and then she said how disappointed they all were at my refusal, and was I really sure that I could not marry him?