The man gazed at her in surprise.  Though he was prepared for much, he was scarcely prepared for such devotion to principle.  “Oh, Herminia,” he cried, “you can’t mean it.  You can’t have thought of what it entails.  Surely, surely, you won’t carry your ideas of freedom to such an extreme, such a dangerous conclusion!”

Herminia looked up at him, half hurt.  “Can’t have thought of what it entails!” she repeated.  Her dimples deepened.  “Why, Alan, haven’t I had my whole lifetime to think of it?  What else have I thought about in any serious way, save this one great question of a woman’s duty to herself, and her sex, and her unborn children?  It’s been my sole study.  How could you fancy I spoke hastily, or without due consideration on such a subject?  Would you have me like the blind girls who go unknowing to the altar, as sheep go to the shambles?  Could you suspect me of such carelessness?—­such culpable thoughtlessness?—­you, to whom I have spoken of all this so freely?”

Alan stared at her, disconcerted, hardly knowing how to answer.  “But what alternative do you propose, then?” he asked in his amazement.

“Propose?” Herminia repeated, taken aback in her turn.  It all seemed to her so plain, and transparent, and natural.  “Why, simply that we should be friends, like any others, very dear, dear friends, with the only kind of friendship that nature makes possible between men and women.”

She said it so softly, with some womanly gentleness, yet with such lofty candor, that Alan couldn’t help admiring her more than ever before for her translucent simplicity, and directness of purpose.  Yet her suggestion frightened him.  It was so much more novel to him than to her.  Herminia had reasoned it all out with herself, as she truly said, for years, and knew exactly how she felt and thought about it.  To Alan, on the contrary, it came with the shock of a sudden surprise, and he could hardly tell on the spur of the moment how to deal with it.  He paused and reflected.  “But do you mean to say, Herminia,” he asked, still holding that soft brown hand unresisted in his, “you’ve made up your mind never to marry any one? made up your mind to brave the whole mad world, that can’t possibly understand the motives of your conduct, and live with some friend, as you put it, unmarried?”

“Yes, I’ve made up my mind,” Herminia answered, with a faint tremor in her maidenly voice, but with hardly a trace now of a traitorous blush, where no blush was needed.  “I’ve made up my mind, Alan; and from all we had said and talked over together, I thought you at least would sympathize in my resolve.”

She spoke with a gentle tinge of regret, nay almost of disillusion.  The bare suggestion of that regret stung Alan to the quick.  He felt it was shame to him that he could not rise at once to the height of her splendid self-renunciation.  “You mistake me, dearest,” he answered, petting her hand in his own (and she allowed him to pet it).  “It wasn’t for myself, or for the world I hesitated.  My thought was for you.  You are very young yet.  You say you have counted the cost.  I wonder if you have.  I wonder if you realize it.”