ed
for Emma, even then. Her vulgarisms of speech and feeling jarred upon me.
But she was feminine; she spoke and looked gently, with sympathy. I enjoyed
that evening--and you must bear in mind what I have told you before, that I
stand in awe of refined women. I am their equal, I know; I can talk with
them; their society is an exquisite delight to me;--but when it comes to
thinking of intimacy with one of them--! Perhaps it is my long years of
squalid existence. Perhaps I have come to regard myself as doomed to life
on a lower level. I find it an impossible thing to imagine myself offering
marriage--making love--to a girl such as those I meet in the big houses.'

'You will outgrow that,' said Munden.

'Yes, yes,--I hope and believe so. And wouldn't it be criminal to deny
myself even the chance, now that I have money? All to-day I have been
tortured like a soul that beholds its salvation lost by a moment's weakness
of the flesh. You can imagine what my suffering has been; it drove me into
sheer lying. I had resolved to deny utterly that I had asked Emma to marry
me--to deny it with a savage boldness, and take the consequences.'

'A most rational resolve, my dear fellow. Pray stick to it. But you haven't
told me yet how the dizzy culmination of your madness was reached. You say
that you proposed _last night_?'

'Yes--and simply for the pleasure of telling Emma, when she had accepted
me, that I had eighty thousand pounds! You can't understand that? I suppose
the change of fortune has made me a little light-headed; I have been going
about with a sense of exaltation which has prompted me to endless follies.
I have felt a desire to be kind to people--to bestow happiness--to share my
joy with others. If I had some of the doctor's money in my pocket, I should
have given away five-pound notes.'

'You contented yourself,' said Munden, laughing, 'with giving a
promissory-note for the whole legacy.'

'Yes; but try to understand. Emma came up to my room at supper-time, and as
usual we talked. I didn't say anything about my uncle's death--yet I felt
the necessity of telling her creep fatally upon me. There was a conflict in
my mind, between common-sense and that awful sentimentality which is my
curse. When Emma came up again after supper, she mentioned that her mother
was gone with a friend to a theatre. "Why don't you go?" I said. "Oh, I
don't go anywhere." "But after all," I urged consolingly, "August isn't
exactly the time for