her soul while it was young and squeezable, and had
crushed it till it fitted into all his little habits; he had
silenced her heart with commonplaces, and dulled her intellect with
his incomprehensible fatuity. And through it all he had been the
most innocent little gentleman alive. Oh, yes, he was pathetic
enough in his way. He himself was only an instrument in the hands of
irrepressible Nature who couples wild soul with tame, hot blood with
cold blood, genius with folly, and makes her sport of their unhappy
offspring. And Nature was playing a glorious game with Frida Tancred
now.

That was Durant's second idea; the thought that had struck him so
unpleasantly after his last interview with her. To put it coarsely,
he had a suspicion, a fear, that Miss Tancred was beginning to fall
in love with him. He might have known that it would happen. It was
just the sort of damnable irony most likely to pursue that
unfortunate woman. There could be no mistake about it; he knew it;
he knew it by many subtle and infallible signs. Somewhere he had
heard or read that no nice man ever knows these things. That was all
nonsense; or, if it had any meaning at all, it could only mean that
no nice man ever shows that he knows. The fact remained that if he
had loved her he would not have known.

For the disagreeable circumstance itself he called Heaven to witness
that he had not been to blame. He had been ready to do his part, to
fall down and worship the unknown Miss Tancred, the Miss Tancred of
his vision. The hour had been ripe, the situation also, and the
mood; the woman alone had failed him. Heaven knew he had done
nothing to make her care for him. True, he had given her a certain
amount of his society; since she found a pleasure in it he would
have been a brute to deny her that poor diversion, that miserable
consolation for the tedium of her existence. Perhaps he had tried
too much to be sympathetic; but who again would not have tried? He
had given her nothing to go upon. What had he ever given her beyond
some infinitesimal portion of his valuable time, at the most some
luminous hour of insight, or perhaps a little superfluous piece of
good advice that was of no possible use to himself? For these things
she had given herself--given herself away. How ludicrously pathetic
some women are! You do them some kindness on an afternoon when you
have nothing better to do and they reward you with the devotion of
eternity; for they have no sens