at morning with the belief that but for the follies of last night she
might have answered him differently. He believed now that, whatever
had gone before, she must still have rejected him. She had treated his
presumption very leniently; she had really spared him.

It went on, over and over. Sometimes it varied a little, as when he
thought of how, when she should tell her mother, Mrs. Pasmer must laugh.
He pictured them both laughing at him; and then Mr. Pasmer--he had
scarcely passed a dozen words with him-coming in and asking what they
were laughing at, and their saying, and his laughing too.

At other times he figured them as incensed at his temerity, which must
seem to them greater and greater, as now it seemed to him. He had never
thought meanly of himself, and the world so far had seemed to think well
of him; but because Alice Pasmer was impossible to him, he felt that it
was an unpardonable boldness in him to have dreamed of her. What
must they be saying of his having passed from the ground of society
compliments and light flirtation to actually telling Alice that he loved
her?

He wondered what Mrs. Pasmer had thought of his telling her that he had
come to Campobello to consider the question whether he should study law
or go into business, and what motive she had supposed he had in telling
her that. He asked himself what motive he had, and tried to pretend that
he had none. He dramatised conversations with Mrs. Pasmer in which he
laughed it off.

He tried to remember all that had passed the day before at the picnic,
and whether Alice had done or said anything to encourage him, and he
could not find that she had. All her trust and freedom was because she
felt perfectly safe with him from any such disgusting absurdity as
he had been guilty of. The ride home through the mist, with its sweet
intimacy, that parting which had seemed so full of tender intelligence,
were parts of the same illusion. There had been nothing of it on her
side from the beginning but a kindliness which he had now flung away for
ever.

He went back to the beginning, and tried to remember the point where he
had started in this fatal labyrinth of error. She had never misled him,
but he had misled himself from the first glimpse of her.

Whatever was best in his light nature, whatever was generous and
self-denying, came out in this humiliation. From the vision of her
derision he passed to a picture of her suffering from pity for him, and
wru