To most people this remorse for an unconscious fault would have seemed morbid and exaggerated. Thousands of girls have to inflict this sort of pain at least once in their lives; the wrong man loves them, and the disastrous 'No' must be spoken. Audrey had not even said 'No,' for nothing had been asked her--she had only had to listen to a declaration of love, an honest, manly confession, that had been wrung from the speaker's lips. Wherein, then, did the blame consist? and why was Audrey shedding such bitter tears as she sat by her window that night looking over the dark garden? For a hundred complex reasons, too involved and intricate to disentangle in one brief hour. Audrey was accusing herself of blindness--of wilful and foolish blindness. She ought to have seen, she must have seen, to what all this was tending. Again and again Mr. Blake had shown her quite plainly the extent of her influence over him. Could she not have warned him in time to prevent this most unhappy declaration? Would it not have been kinder to have drawn back in the first months of their intimacy, and have interposed some barrier of dignified reserve that would have kept him silent for ever? But no! she had drawn him on: not by coquetry--Audrey was far too high-minded to coquet with any man--but simply by the warm friendliness of her manner. She had liked his company; she had accepted his attentions, not once had she repulsed him; and the consequence was his attachment had grown and increased in intensity day by day, until it had overmastered him. He had said that his heart was almost broken, and it was her fault. What right had she to be so kind to him, until her very softness and graciousness had fed his wild hopes? Was it not true when he had implied that his misery lay at her door? Audrey felt as though her own heart was broken that night--such a passion of pity and remorse swept over her. What would she not give to undo it all! 'If I could only bear some of his suffering,' she thought, 'if I could only comfort him, I should not care what became of myself. I would sooner bear anything than incur this awful responsibility of spoiling a life;' and Audrey wept again. But even at this miserable crisis she shrank from questioning herself too closely. A sort of terror and strange beating at the heart assailed her if she tried to look into her own thoughts. Was there no subtle sweetness in the knowledge that she was so beloved? No wish, lying deep down in her heart, that it might have been possible to comfort him?