nt of view, in
allowing the engagement to last a day longer. It would be surely wiser
to write a letter and with all the love he felt explain that he thought
she would be happier not to see him for a short while. Yet such a course
might provoke her to declare the whole miserable business, and the false
deductions that might be made from her account were dreadful to
contemplate. He blamed himself entirely for what had happened, and yet
he could scarcely have foreseen such a violent change. Even now he could
not say what exactly had begun the outburst, and indeed the only
explanation of it was by a weight of emotion that had been accumulating
for months. Of course he should never have persuaded her to come out on
the river at night, but still that he had done so was only a technical
offense against convention. It was she who had magnified her
acquiescence beyond any importance he could have conceived. He must
thank religion for that, he must thank that poisonous fellow in the
confessional who had first started her upon this ruinous path of
introspection and self-torment. But, whatever the cause, it was the
remedy that demanded his attention, and he twisted the situation round
and round without being able to decide how to act. He realized how month
by month his sense of responsibility for Pauline had been growing, yet
now the problem of her happiness stared at him, brutally insoluble. What
was it Margaret had once said about his being unlikely to squander
Pauline for a young man's experience? Good God! had not just that been
the very thing he had nearly done; and then with a shudder, remembering
last night, he wondered if he ought any longer to say "nearly." He must
see her. Of course he must see her this morning. He must somehow heal
the injury he had inflicted upon her youth.

Pauline was very gentle when they met. She had no reproaches except for
herself and the way she had frightened him.

"Oh, my Pauline, can't you forget it?" he begged. "Let me go away for a
month or more. Let me go away till Margaret and Richard are going to be
married."

She acquiesced half listlessly, and then seeming to feel that she might
have been cold in her manner, she wished him a happy holiday from her
moods and jealousy and exacting love. He tried to pierce the true
significance of her attitude, because it held in its heart a premonition
for him that everything between them had been destroyed last night, and
that henceforth whatever he