s
hostility; and then the sweet advances of a "friendship" that was to
unite them in a bond, secret and unique, a bond that took no account of
the commonplaces of love and marriage, the link of equal and kindred
souls in a common struggle with hard and sordid circumstance.

"I have neither family nor powerful friends," he had written to her a
few weeks after their first meeting; "all that I have won, I have won
for myself. Nobody ever made 'interest' for me but you. You, too, are
alone in the world. You, too, have to struggle for yourself. Let us
unite our forces--cheer each other, care for each other--and keep our
friendship a sacred secret from the world that would misunderstand it. I
will not fail you, I will give you all my confidence; and I will try and
understand that noble, wounded heart of yours, with its memories, and
all those singular prides and isolations that have been imposed on it by
circumstance. I will not say, let me be your brother; there is something
_banal_ in that; 'friend' is good enough for us both; and there is
between us a community of intellectual and spiritual interest which will
enable us to add new meaning even to that sacred word. I will write to
you every day; you shall know all that happens to me; and whatever
grateful devotion can do to make your life smoother shall be done."

Five months ago was it, that that letter was written?

Its remembered phrases already rang bitterly in an aching heart. Since
it reached her, she had put out all her powers as a woman, all her
influence as an intelligence, in the service of the writer.

And now, here she sat in the dark, tortured by a passion of which she
was ashamed, before which she was beginning to stand helpless in a kind
of terror. The situation was developing, and she found herself wondering
how much longer she would be able to control herself or it. Very
miserably conscious, too, was she all the time that she was now playing
for a reward that was secretly, tacitly, humiliatingly denied her. How
could a poor man, with Harry Warkworth's ambitions, think for a moment
of marriage with a woman in her ambiguous and dependent position? Her
common-sense told her that the very notion was absurd. And yet, since
the Duchess's gossip had given point and body to a hundred vague
suspicions, she was no longer able to calm, to master herself.

Suddenly a thought of another kind occurred to her. It added to her
smart that Sir Wilfrid, in their meeting a