‘From Mr. Peak himself, then?’

Sidwell was agitated.

‘Yes—­I think so.  But what does that matter?’

The other allowed her face to betray perplexity.

‘So much for the past,’ she said at length.  ’And now?’——­

‘I have not the courage to do what I wish.’

There was a long silence.

‘About your wish,’ asked Sylvia at length, ’you are not at all doubtful?’

’Not for one moment.—­Whether I err in my judgment of him could be proved only by time; but I know that if I were free, if I stood alone’——­

She broke off and sighed.  ‘It would mean, I suppose,’ said the other, ‘a rupture with your family?’

’Father would not abandon me, but I should darken the close of his life.  Buckland would utterly cast me off; mother would wish to do so.—­You see, I cannot think and act simply as a woman, as a human being.  I am bound to a certain sphere of life.  The fact that I have outgrown it, counts for nothing.  I cannot free myself without injury to people whom I love.  To act as I wish would be to outrage every rule and prejudice of the society to which I belong.  You yourself—­ you know how you would regard me.’

Sylvia replied deliberately.

’I am seeing you in a new light, Sidwell.  It takes a little time to reconstruct my conception of you.’

‘You think worse of me than you did.’

’Neither better nor worse, but differently.  There has been too much reserve between us.  After so long a friendship, I ought to have known you more thoroughly.  To tell the truth, I have thought now and then of you and Mr. Peak; that was inevitable.  But I went astray; it seemed to me the most unlikely thing that you should regard him with more than a doubtful interest.  I knew, of course, that he had made you his ideal, and I felt sorry for him.’

’I seemed to you unworthy?’——­

’Too placid, too calmly prudent.—­In plain words, Sidwell, I do think better of you.’

Sidwell smiled.

’Only to know me henceforth as the woman who did not dare to act upon her best impulses.’

’As for “best”—­I can’t say.  I don’t glorify passion, as you know; and on the other hand I have little sympathy with the people who are always crying out for self-sacrifice.  I don’t know whether it would be “best” to throw over your family, or to direct yourself solely with regard to their comfort.’

Sidwell broke in.

’Yes, that is the true phrase—­“their comfort”.  No higher word should be used.  That is the ideal of the life to which I have been brought up.  Comfort, respectability.—­And has he no right?  If I sacrifice myself to father and mother, do I not sacrifice him as well?  He has forfeited all claim to consideration—­that is what people say.  With my whole soul, I deny it!  If he sinned against anyone, it was against me, and the sin ended as soon as I understood him.  That episode in his life is blotted out; by what law must it condemn to imperfection the whole of his life and of my own?  Yet because people will not, cannot, look at a thing in a spirit of justice, I must wrong myself and him.’