There was no good blinking the matter; the fact was obvious; the girl was hopelessly and utterly compromised; and he, aided certainly by untoward circumstances—­for the sardonic interference of which, in such circumstances, a man of sense usually allows—­he had done it.  They had had their “holiday,” without taking thought for the morrow, in the way approved by boys and dogs and creatures without experience.  And here was to-morrow, knocking at the door and demanding the price—­as experience showed that it usually did.  The question was, who was going to pay, he or she?  She had taken it upon herself as a matter of course; it seemed natural to her that the burden should be the woman’s, but it did not seem so to him; among his people it was the man who was expected, and who himself expected, to pay.  When he had grasped the situation fully and saw how she must inevitably stand he also saw at the same time and equally plainly, that he must marry her; nothing else was possible.

He walked away from the window and began to search for writing materials.  He could not go and see her, it was out of the question under the circumstances; he would have to write, and, on the whole, perhaps, it was easier that way.  He sat down to the table, but he did not at once begin, for between him and the paper there rose up the vision of a stately old Norfolk house.  It was his; he had not lived there for years, but he supposed he would some day; all his people had; he remembered his grandfather there and his grandmother—­a tall, stately woman, a woman of parts.  He thought of her, and his mother, a graceful, gracious woman—­he thought of her standing in the drawing-room between the long windows, receiving company.  And then he thought of Julia.

He turned away from the vision abruptly, and dated his letter.  But soon he had lain down his pen again.  He was conservative, and Julia was not of the breed of the women he had recalled; she had no kinship with them or their modern prototypes, one of whom he vaguely supposed he should marry some day—­when he went to live in the old Norfolk house.  Hers was not a stately or a gracious or an all pervading feminine presence; she demanded no court, no care, no carpet for her way; she could come and go unnoticed and unattended; you could overlook her—­though she never overlooked you or anything else.  She had her points certainly, she was loyal to the core—­she would be loyal to him, he was sure, in this scrape, with a silly wrong-headed loyalty, more like a man’s to a woman than a woman’s to a man.  She was loyal to her none too reputable family—­that family was a bitter thing to his pride of race.  She was courageous, too, cheerfully enduring, laughing in the face of disaster, patient when action was impossible and when it was possible—­he found himself smiling when he recalled her—­surely there was never one more gay, more ready, more steady, more quietly alert than she when there was a struggle with men or matters in the wind.  She had brains of