saving my self-respect.  I will not compare my suffering with yours, but none the less it is intense.  This is the first great sorrow of my life, and I do not think a keener one will ever befall me.  Keep this letter by you; do not be content to read it once and throw it aside, for I have spoken to you out of my deepest feeling, and in time you will do me more justice than you can now.’  And further on:  ’As to that which has parted us, there must be no ambiguity, no pretence of superhuman generosity.  I should lie if I said that I do not wish to find Thyrza for my own sake.  If I find her, I shall ask her to be my wife.  I wanted to say this when we spoke together, but could not; neither was I calm enough to express this rightly, nor you rightly to hear it.’

Gilbert allowed a day or two to go by, then made answer.  He wrote briefly, but enough to show Egremont that the man’s natural nobility could triumph over his natural resentment.  It was a moving letter, its pathos lying in the fact that its writer shunned all attempt to be pathetic.  ‘Now that I know the truth,’ he said, ’I can only ask your pardon for the thoughts I had of you; you have not wronged me, and I can have no ill-feeling against you.  If Thyrza is ever your wife, I hope your happiness may be hers.  As for the other things, do not reproach yourself.  You wished to befriend me, and I think I was not unworthy of it.  Few things in life turn out as we desire; to have done one’s best with a good intention is much to look back upon —­very few have more.’

Gilbert did not show this letter to Lydia, nor had he told her of what he had learnt in the conversation with Egremont.  The fear would have seemed more intolerable if he had uttered it.  But the hope which supported him was proof against even such a danger as this.  To his mind there was something unnatural in a union between Egremont and Thyrza; try as be would, he could not realise it as having come to pass.  The two were parted by so vast a social distinction, and, let Nature say what it will, the artificialities of life are wont to prevail.  He could imagine an unpermitted bond between them, with the necessary end in Thyrza’s sacrifice to the world’s injustice; but their marriage appeared to him among the things so unlikely as to be in practice impossible.  Of course the wish was father to the thought.  But he reasoned upon the hope which would not abandon him.  Thyrza had again and again proved the extreme sensitiveness of her nature; she could not bear to inflict pain.  He remembered how she had once come back after saying good-night, because it seemed to her that she had spoken with insufficient kindness.  The instance was typical.  And now, though tempted by every motive that can tempt a woman, she had abandoned herself to unimagined trials rather than seek her own welfare at another’s expense.  To fulfil her promise had been beyond her power, but, if there must be suffering, she would share it.  And now, in that wretched exile, he knew that self-pity could not absorb her.  She would think of him constantly, and of such thought would come compassion and repentance.  Those feelings might bring her back.  If only she came back, it was enough.  She could not undo what she had done, but neither could she forbid him to live with eyes on the future.