George Wainwright liked pain as little as most men like it; and as he turned his face towards England, discomfited and utterly downcast, he felt, with a sardonic morbidity of feeling, that he would not be disinclined now to exchange his capacity of suffering and his steadiness of disposition for the _volage_ fickleness which he was accustomed to despise in many of his associates. If he could get over it, it would be much better for him, and no worse for her, he thought; but the next true and fine impulse of his nature rebuked the foregoing, and made him prize the sentiments which had come to ennoble his life, to check its selfishness and dissipate its ennui, though by the substitution of pain. And for her? He had seen so plainly, so unmistakably the difference in Annette, the new element of hope, anticipation, and enjoyment which her affection for him had brought into her hitherto darkened life, that the utmost exertion of his common sense failed to make him believe she would be the better for the complete severance between them which reason dictated to him ought to be the upshot of the failure of his enterprise. "It is better to have loved," he repeated to himself, as he sat moodily in the railway-carriage on his return journey, unheeding alike the trimly-cultivated country through which he was passing, and the profusion of flimsy literature, journalistic and other, with which the cushions were strewn--"it is better to have loved----" And then he thought, "She is not _lost_. She lives, and I can see her. I may cheer and alleviate her life, though it may never be blessed with union. When the dark days come, they will be less dark to her, because when she emerges into light again, it will be to find me; and at her best and brightest--ah, how good and bright that is!--she will be happier and better because of me. Good God! am I so weak and so selfish that I cannot accept what there is in this of blessing, without pining for that which can never be?"