Ideala had returned to us quite under the impression that if she took the step she proposed we should think it right to cast her off; and that little tentative: "Must I give you up?" was the only protest she had offered. But such was not our intention. Far from it! We do not forsake our friends in their bodily ailments, and we are poor, pitiful, egotistical creatures indeed when we desert them for their mental and moral maladies, leaving them to struggle against them and fight them out or succumb to them alone, according to their strength and circumstances. The world will forsake them fast enough, and that is sufficient punishment--if they deserve punishment. Of course, Ideala could never have come back to us as an honoured guest again, after taking such a step, but she would have continued to fill the same place in our affections, if not in our esteem. "And you will drive everybody else away, and keep the house empty all the year round, in order to be able to receive her--_and_ Mr. Lorrimer-- whenever they choose to visit us," Claudia had declared when we discussed the subject. That was not quite what I intended; but I had made Ideala understand that nothing she could do would affect her intercourse with us. I told her so at once, because I would not have her alter her determination for any consideration but the highest. She might at the last have hesitated to separate herself from us for ever; but I felt sure if that were the case, and it was not a better motive entirely which deterred her, she would not be satisfied eventually; and I know now that I was right. Ideala wrote to Lorrimer, and when she had finished her letter I found that she intended to impose a terrible task upon me. "Until you know him yourself you will always misjudge him," she said. "I want you to take him my letter, and make his acquaintance." I hesitated. "It is the least you can do," she pleaded. "I shall be easier in my mind if you will. It will be better for him to see you, and hear all the things I cannot tell him in my letter; and--and--if I must not see him myself it will be a comfort to see somebody who has. Do go. I shall be pained if you refuse." This decided me, and I went at once.