principles, made him guilty at last of what a
moralist would call very deliberate rascality. He himself was inclined
to see his behaviour in that light; yet why had Nancy so smoothed the
path of temptation?

That _her_ love was love indeed, he might take for granted. To a certain
point, it excused her. But she seemed so thoroughly able to protect
herself; the time of her green girlhood had so long gone by. For
explanation, he must fall back again on the circumstances of her origin
and training. Perhaps she illustrated a social peril, the outcome of
modern follies. Yes, that was how he would look at it. A result of
charlatan 'education' operating upon crude character.

Who could say what the girl had been reading, what cheap philosophies
had unsettled her mind? Is not a little knowledge a dangerous thing?

Thus far had he progressed in the four and twenty hours which followed
his--or Nancy's--conquest. Meanwhile he had visited the office of the
registrar, had made his application for a marriage licence, a proceeding
which did not tend to soothe him. Later, when he saw Nancy again, he
experienced a revival of that humaner mood which accompanied his pledge
to marry her, the mood of regret, but also of tenderness, of compassion.
A tenderness that did not go very deep, a half-slighting compassion. His
character, and the features of the case, at present allowed no more; but
he preferred the kindlier attitude.

Of course he preferred it. Was he not essentially good-natured? Would he
not, at any ordinary season, go out of his way to do a kindness? Did
not his soul revolt against every form of injustice? Whom had he ever
injured? For his humanity, no less than for his urbanity, he claimed a
noteworthy distinction among young men of the time.

And there lay the pity of it. But for Nancy's self-abandonment, he might
have come to love her in good earnest. As it was, the growth of their
intimacy had been marked with singular, unanticipated impulses on
his side, impulses quite inconsistent with heartless scheming. In the
compunctious visitings which interrupted his love-making at least twice,
there was more than a revolt of mere honesty, as he recognised during
his brief flight to London. Had she exercised but the common prudence of
womanhood!

Why, that she did not, might tell both for and against her. Granting
that she lacked true dignity, native refinement, might it not have been
expected that artfulness would supply their