man I had
ever known, and the last to wish to owe any advantage to surprise, to
unpreparedness, to any play on the spring of sex. The better I came,
retrospectively, to know her, the more sure I was of this, and the less
intelligible her act appeared. And then, suddenly, after a night of
hungry restless thinking, the flash of enlightenment came. She had come
to my house, had brought her trunk with her, had thrown herself at my
head with all possible violence and publicity, in order to give me a
pretext, a loophole, an honourable excuse, for doing and saying--why,
precisely what I had said and done!

"As the idea came to me it was as if some ironic hand had touched an
electric button, and all my fatuous phrases had leapt out on me in fire.

"Of course she had known all along just the kind of thing I should
say if I didn't at once open my arms to her; and to save my pride, my
dignity, my conception of the figure I was cutting in her eyes, she had
recklessly and magnificently provided me with the decentest pretext a
man could have for doing a pusillanimous thing....

"With that discovery the whole case took a different aspect. It hurt
less to think of Paulina--and yet it hurt more. The tinge of bitterness,
of doubt, in my thoughts of her had had a tonic quality. It was harder
to go on persuading myself that I had done right as, bit by bit, my
theories crumbled under the test of time. Yet, after all, as she herself
had said, one could judge of results only in the long run....

"The Trants stayed away for two years; and about a year after they got
back, you may remember, Trant was killed in a railway accident. You know
Fate's way of untying a knot after everybody has given up tugging at it!

"Well--there I was, completely justified: all my weaknesses turned into
merits! I had 'saved' a weak woman from herself, I had kept her to the
path of duty, I had spared her the humiliation of scandal and the misery
of self-reproach; and now I had only to put out my hand and take my
reward.

"I had avoided Paulina since her return, and she had made no effort to
see me. But after Trant's death I wrote her a few lines, to which she
sent a friendly answer; and when a decent interval had elapsed, and I
asked if I might call on her, she answered at once that she would see
me.

"I went to her house with the fixed intention of asking her to marry
me--and I left it without having done so. Why? I don't know that I can
tell you. Perhaps yo