resolved never to see her again if I could help it. I did keep away,
and then luck would have it that I met her taking a walk one
snowy afternoon. I suspected she had come out to get away from the
remembrance of me, as I had to get away from the desire to see her;
and she was so moved by seeing me that I could not help showing her
that I cared for her, and perhaps seemed to care more than I did.
It was a sore temptation, and I yielded to it. Wrong? Do you think I
don't know that it was wrong? But the worst is to come. I walked back
with her, and an accident led to our having one of those conversations
that people have when they are under the influence of emotion and
cannot give it vent in its natural way, but must do something or talk.
If I could have put my arms about her and kissed her, we could have
got on without words: as it was, I said I hardly know what, and she,
being very much in earnest and very unsophisticated, showed me how
much she cared for me. I vow, George, if I had had a moment to think,
to gather my self-control--But I had not, and so we ended by my
finding her arms round my neck, after all. I rushed away with hardly
a word, and walked and walked, and thought and thought. The next day
comes a note from her--what one would call a manly, straightforward
acknowledgment that she had led me into a position that was an unfair
one, and that she regretted it. Nothing franker or more generous could
have been conceived, but somehow it roused within me the impulse to
make her conscious of the weakness of her sex. My masculine conceit
rose and demanded an opportunity of self-assertion. I went to her,
and she seemed more attractive than ever. Her independence and
self-reliance nettled me, and I was mean enough to yield to the desire
to see if she could resist me. But I was richly punished, for the
knowledge rolled over me like a wave that she loved me, and I left
her, stung by the consciousness of having taken an unworthy advantage
of a simple and trustful nature. I know that this is high tragedy, and