Helen gazed at him in surprise as she echoed, “Was it so wrong?” And at the same moment even while she was speaking, a memory flashed across her mind, the memory of what had occurred at Fairview the last time she had been there with Mr. Harrison.  A deep, burning blush mantled her face, and her eyes dropped, and she trembled visibly.  It was a better response to the other’s question than any words could have been, and because in spite of his contact with the world he was still in his heart a gentleman, he understood and changed color himself and looked away, feeling perhaps more rebuked and humbled than he had ever felt in his life before.

So they sat thus for several minutes without speaking a word, or looking at each other, each doing penance in his own heart.  At last, in a very low voice, the man said, “Helen, I do not know just how I can ever apologize to you.”

The girl answered quietly:  “I could not let you apologize to me, Mr. Harrison, for I never once thought that you had done anything wrong.”

“I have done very wrong indeed,” he answered, his voice trembling, “for I do not think that I had any right even to ask you to marry me.  You make me feel suddenly how very coarse a world I have lived in, and how much lower than yours all my ways of thinking are.  You look surprised that I say that,” he added, as he saw that the girl was about to interrupt him, “but you do not know much about the world.  Do you suppose that there are many women in society who would hesitate to marry me for my money?”

“I do not know,” said Helen, slowly; “but, Mr. Harrison, you could certainly never be happy with a woman who would do that.”

“I do not think now that I should,” the man replied, earnestly, “but I did not feel that way before.  I did not have much else to offer, Helen, for money is all that a man like me ever tries to get in the world.”

“It is so very wrong, Mr. Harrison,” put in the other, quickly.  “When people live in that way they come to lose sight of all that is right and beautiful in life; and it is all so selfish and wicked!” (Those were words which might have made Mr. Howard smile a trifle had he been there to hear them; but Helen was too much in earnest to think about being original.)

“I know,” said Mr. Harrison, “and I used to believe in such things; but one never meets anyone else that does, and it is so easy to live differently.  When you spoke to me as you did just now, you made me seem a very poor kind of a person indeed.”

The man paused, and Helen sat gazing at him with a worried look upon her face.  “It was not that which I meant to do,” she began, but then she stopped; and after a long silence, Mr. Harrison took up the conversation again, speaking in a low, earnest voice.

“Helen,” he said, “you have made me see that I am quite unworthy to ask for your regard,—­that I have really nothing fit to offer you.  But I might have one thing that you could appreciate,—­for I could worship, really worship, such a woman as you; and I could do everything that I could think of to make myself worthy of you,—­even if it meant the changing of all my ways of life.  Do you not suppose that you could quite forget that I was a rich man, Helen, and still let me be devoted to you?”