“Yes; I know you well,” Waymark said.

Ida looked steadily at him.  “If you are speaking to me for the last time, won’t you be sincere, and tell me of my faults?  Do you think I could not bear it?  You can say nothing to me—­nothing from your heart—­that I won’t accept in all humility.  Are we no longer even friends?”

“You mistake me altogether.”

“And you are still my friend?” she uttered warmly.  “But why do you think me unfit for good work?”

“I had no such thought.  You know how my ideals oppose each other.  I spoke on the impulse of the moment; I often find it so hard to reconcile myself to anything in life that is not, still and calm and beautiful.  I am just now bent on forgetting all the things about which you are so earnest.”

“Earnest?  Yes.  But I cannot give my whole self to the work.  I am so lonely.”

“You will not be so for long,” he answered with more cheerfulness.  “You have every opportunity of making for yourself a good social position.  You will soon have friends, if only you seek them.  Your goodness will make you respected.  Indeed I wonder at your remaining so isolated.  It need not be; I am sure it need not.  Your wealth—­I have no thought of speaking cynically—­your wealth must—­”

“My wealth!  What is it to me?  What do I care for all the friends it might bring?  They are nothing to me in my misery.  But you . . .  I would give all I possess for one kind word from you.”

Flushing over forehead and cheeks, she compelled herself to meet his look.  It was her wealth that stood between her and him.  Her position was not like that of other women.  Conventionalities were meaningless, set against a life.

“I have tried hard to make myself ever so little worthy of you,” she murmured, when her voice would again obey her will.  “Am I still—­ still too far beneath you?”

He stood like one detected in a crime, and stammered the words.

“Ida, I am not free.”

He had risen.  Ida sprang up, and moved towards him.

“This was your secret?  Tell me, then.  Look—­I am strong!  Tell me about it.  I might have thought of this.  I thought only of myself.  I might have known there was good reason for the distance you put between us.  Forgive me—­oh, forgive the pain I have caused you!

“You asking for forgiveness?  How you must despise me.”

“Why should I despise you?  You have never said a word to me that any friend, any near friend, might not have said, never since I myself, in my folly, forbade you to.  You were not bound to tell me—­”

“I had told your grandfather,” Waymark said in a broken voice.  “In a letter I wrote the very day he was taken ill, I begged him to let you know that I had bound myself.”

As he spoke he knew that he was excusing himself with a truth which implied a falsehood, and before it was too late his soul revolted against the unworthiness.