For hours he tossed and turned and revolved these problems. Rain
beat on the leaded panes of the Waterton dormers. Day dawned, but
no light came with it to his troubled spirit. The more he thought
of this dilemma, the more profoundly he shrank from the idea of
allowing himself to be made into the instrument for what the world
would call, after its kind, Herminia's shame and degradation. For
even if the world could be made to admit that Herminia had done
what she did from chaste and noble motives,--which considering what
we all know of the world, was improbable,--yet at any rate it could
never allow that he himself had acted from any but the vilest and
most unworthy reasons. Base souls would see in the sacrifice he
made to Herminia's ideals, only the common story of a trustful
woman cruelly betrayed by the man who pretended to love her, and
would proceed to treat him with the coldness and contempt with
which such a man deserves to be treated.

As the morning wore on, this view of the matter obtruded itself
more and more forcibly every moment on Alan. Over and over again
he said to himself, let come what come might, he must never aid and
abet that innocent soul in rushing blindfold over a cliff to her
own destruction. It is so easy at twenty-two to ruin yourself for
life; so difficult at thirty to climb slowly back again. No, no,
holy as Herminia's impulses were, he must save her from herself; he
must save her from her own purity; he must refuse to be led astray
by her romantic aspirations. He must keep her to the beaten path
trod by all petty souls, and preserve her from the painful crown of
martyrdom she herself designed as her eternal diadem.

Full of these manful resolutions, he rose up early in the morning.