But it was long, very long, before Wilfrid could bring himself to pass the line which separates friendship from lovemaking.  Of passion his nature had no lack, but it seemed to be absorbed in memory; he shrank from the thought of using to another those words he had spoken to Emily.  One of the points of intense secret sympathy between Emily and himself was this chastity of temperament.  Constitutionally incapable of vice, he held in repugnance even that degree of materialism in the view of sexual relations which is common to men who have grown their beards.  Not only had a coarse word never passed his lips; he intensely disliked the frivolous way of discussing subjects which to him were more sacred than any other.  When he had decided with himself that it was his destiny to wed Beatrice, he had a positive fear of taking this step from which there would be no return.  Before he could do so, he must have utterly broken with the past, and how could that ever be I He had not even moments of coldness in his thought of Emily; it was beyond his power to foresee the day when she would have become to him a mere symbol of something that was.  Suppose that some day, when married, he again met her?  In spite of everything, he did not believe that she had ceased to love him; somewhere she still kept her faith, martyred by the incomprehensible fate which had torn her from his arms.  To meet her again would be to forget every tie save that holiest which made one of his spirit and of hers.

One day—­it was during the second season which Mrs. Baxendale passed in London—­he went to his friend and asked her where Emily was.  Mrs. Baxendale was too quick for him; Wilfrid thought he had put his question unexpectedly, but the lady was ready for such a question at any moment, and she replied, with appearance of absolute sincerity, that she had no knowledge of Emily’s place of abode.

‘Where was she last—­when you last heard from her?’ Wilfrid asked, in surprise at an answer so unanticipated.

Mrs. Baxendale named a town in Yorkshire.  She had begun with a calculated falsehood, and had no scruple in backing it up by others.

‘What can it concern you, Wilfrid?’ she continued.  ’Shall I confess my weakness?  I mentioned your name in a letter to her; the result was this complete ending of our correspondence.  Now, will not even that satisfy you?’

He did not doubt what he was told; Mrs. Baxendale’s character for veracity stood high.  It was solely out of regard for Wilfrid that she allowed herself to mislead him, for by this time it seemed obvious that Beatrice was drawing near to her reward, and Mrs. Baxendale, with pardonable error, took this last inquiry about Emily for a piece of conscientiousness, which, once satisfied, Wilfrid would hold on his course to a happy haven.  ‘She has given him up,’ was her self-justification.  ’Beatrice now would suffer no less than she has done.’

‘Then tell me one thing more,’ Wilfrid pursued.  ’What has become of that man Dagworthy?’