days and nights such as sap the foundations of a man’s moral being and shake convictions which appeared impregnable.  The catastrophe which had come upon him was proportionate in its effects to the immeasurable happiness which preceded it.  Remember that it was not only the imaginary wrong from which his mind suffered; the fact that Thyrza loved Egremont was in itself an agony almost enough to threaten his reason.  His love was not demonstrative; perhaps he did not himself know all its force until jealousy taught him.  How, think you, did he spend that night on the Channel, voyaging from Southampton to Jersey?  What sort of companions were the winds and waves as he paced the deck in the dim light before dawn, straining his eyes for the first sight of land?  To the end of all things that night would remain with him, a ghastly memory.  And since then he had not known one full hour of forgetfulness.  The days and the nights had succeeded each other as in a torture-chamber.  His body had wasted; his mind ever renewed its capability of anguish.  With all appearances against Egremont, could he preserve the nice balance of his judgment through an experience such as this?

Had he seen Egremont at once, after Thyrza’s disappearance, it would not have been so hard for him to credit the denial.  The blow was not felt to its full until the night had passed.  Thyrza’s exculpation of Egremont would then have been strong upon the latter’s side.  But the fruitless journey frenzied him.  It was impossible for him to avoid the belief that the letter had been contrived to deceive him.  All the suspicions he had entertained grew darker as his suffering increased.  His meeting with Egremont at the end of Newport Street on the Wednesday night seemed to him beyond doubt condemnatory.  He remembered the young man’s haste and obvious agitation.  Then Thyrza’s words ceased to have weight; he thought them due to her desire to avert suspicion from her lover.  And now that he was at length face to face with the man whom in his lonely woe he had cursed as the falsest friend, his ear was keen to detect every note of treachery, his eyes read Egremont’s countenance with preternatural keenness.  Walter could not sustain such proof; his agitation spoke against him.  Only when he at length passed from uncertain argument and pleading to scornful repudiation of the charge, did his utterances awake in the hearer the old associations of sincerity and nobleness.  How many a night Gilbert had hung on every word that fell from him!  Could he speak thus and be no more than a contemptible hypocrite?

Walter paused for a few moments.  When no reply came he continued with the same warmth: 

’I have told you that, on those two mornings, when she was with me in the library, no word passed between us that you might not have heard.  It is true.  But one thing I did say to her which doubtless would not have been said in your presence.  She was speaking to me as if to a superior; I begged her to let there be an end of that, and to allow me to call myself her friend.  I meant it in the purest sense, and in that sense she understood it.  If I was wrong in taking that freedom with her, at least there was no thought of wrong in my mind.’