e had never seemed to him so beautiful, and he wanted to take her in
his arms and comfort her.

"I had no one but you to come to," she murmured in her confusion. But she
was thinking: "Why didn't you stop me before? Why have you let me go on
all these months?"

"I must try to think of something, and I'll speak to my friend Rosa--Miss
Macquarrie, you know."

"You are a man," said Glory, "and I thought perhaps----" But she could
not speak of her fool's paradise now, she was so deeply ashamed and
abased.

"That's just the difficulty, my dear. If I were not a man, I might so
easily help you."

What did he mean? The frogs kept croaking at the margin of the lake,
disturbed by the sound of their footsteps.

"Whatever you were to tell me to do I should do it," she said, in the
same confused murmur. She was ruining herself with every word she
uttered.

He drew up and stood before her, so close that she could feel his breath,
on her face. "My dear Glory," he said passionately, "don't think it isn't
terrible to me to renounce the happiness of helping you, but I must not,
I dare not, I will not take it."

She could scarcely breathe for the shame that took sudden hold of her.

"Heaven knows I would give anything to have the joy of looking after your
happiness, dear, but I should despise myself forever if I took advantage
of your circumstances."

Good God! What did he think she had been asking of him?

"I am thinking of yourself, Glory, because I want to esteem you and
honour you, and because your good name is above everything
else--everything else in the world."

Her shame was now abject. It stifled her, deafened her, blinded her. She
could not speak or hear or see.

He took her hand and pressed it.

"Let me go," she stammered.

"Stay--do not go yet!"

"Let me go, will you?"

"One moment----"

But with a cry like the cry of a startled bird she disappeared in the
shadow of the trees.

He stood a moment where she had left him, tingling in every nerve,
wanting to follow her, and overtake her, and kiss her, and abandon
everything. But he buttoned up his overcoat and turned away, telling
himself that whatever another man might have done in the same case he at
least had done rightly, and that men like John Storm were wrong if they
thought it was impossible to act on principle without the impulse of
religion.

Meanwhile Glory was flying through the darkness and weeping in the
bitterness of her disappointment an