ne? Upon
my soul, it grates me to the heart to be obliged to think so ill of a
man I thought my friend!'

Knight, soul-sick and weary of his life, did not arouse himself to utter
a word in reply. How should he defend himself when his defence was the
accusation of Elfride? On that account he felt a miserable satisfaction
in letting her father go on thinking and speaking wrongfully. It was a
faint ray of pleasure straying into the great gloominess of his brain to
think that the vicar might never know but that he, as her lover, tempted
her away, which seemed to be the form Mr. Swancourt's misapprehension
had taken.

'Now, are you coming?' said Mr. Swancourt to her again. He took her
unresisting hand, drew it within his arm, and led her down the stairs.
Knight's eyes followed her, the last moment begetting in him a frantic
hope that she would turn her head. She passed on, and never looked back.

He heard the door open--close again. The wheels of a cab grazed the
kerbstone, a murmured direction followed. The door was slammed together,
the wheels moved, and they rolled away.

From that hour of her reappearance a dreadful conflict raged within
the breast of Henry Knight. His instinct, emotion, affectiveness--or
whatever it may be called--urged him to stand forward, seize upon
Elfride, and be her cherisher and protector through life. Then came
the devastating thought that Elfride's childlike, unreasoning, and
indiscreet act in flying to him only proved that the proprieties must be
a dead letter with her; that the unreserve, which was really artlessness
without ballast, meant indifference to decorum; and what so likely as
that such a woman had been deceived in the past? He said to himself,
in a mood of the bitterest cynicism: 'The suspicious discreet woman who
imagines dark and evil things of all her fellow-creatures is far too
shrewd to be deluded by man: trusting beings like Elfride are the women
who fall.'

Hours and days went by, and Knight remained inactive. Lengthening
time, which made fainter the heart-awakening power of her presence,
strengthened the mental ability to reason her down. Elfride loved him,
he knew, and he could not leave off loving her but marry her he would
not. If she could but be again his own Elfride--the woman she had seemed
to be--but that woman was dead and buried, and he knew her no more! And
how could he marry this Elfride, one who, if he had originally seen her
as she was, would have been