"We were very happy for a year--for longer," he went on, hurriedly. "She was perfectly happy, because she believed she was doing right. I was not as happy as I had expected to be. My conscience seemed often to cry out, after years of silence; but I would not listen to it. We passed many delightful hours together, and I was always proud to think my friend was a beautiful, refined and true woman. I congratulated myself, that at least, I had shown better taste in the selection of my companion, than many of my friends who were similarly situated. The lady was independently wealthy, and our association was prompted by congenial tastes and affection. "Then I met you. Your voice woke all the higher impulses of my nature: your conversation lifted me into a strangely rarified atmosphere; I abhorred my old life from the hour I met you. I have tried to break away from it, but I cannot without crushing a human heart. Unfortunately, my friend has passed through no such change of feeling. She is happy, and she loves me. To leave her alone, to desert her, seems heartless and cruel. The way of escape is hedged about with unforeseen difficulties. I am tortured from within and without. Surely the way of the transgressor _is_ hard. I would reform my life, if I knew how. Can you tell me what is right to do under the circumstances?" She was very pale. Her hands were clasped tightly before her. Her breath came hard. "There is one way--only one," she said. "I wonder it has not suggested itself to you. Make the tie that binds you to your friend a legal one. Make her your wife, and let the future atone for the past." He started to his feet as if she had struck him. "It is impossible!" he said. "She would never consent. It is opposed to all her theories." Helena looked at him coldly, a dumb pain in her face. "I fear you can not understand our very peculiar situation," he went on. "But you _must_ believe I am telling you the whole truth. I am not misstating one thing. There has been no effort at misleading this woman--this friend of mine. There never was any talk of marriage between us, save to condemn it. She often said she liked me first, because I did not endeavor to convert her from her pet theories, as many men had done. She is very beautiful, and has been annoyed by many suitors. But she is almost a monomaniac upon the subject. You would find less to condemn in my course, if you could understand how peculiar and deep-rooted were her prejudices." "I _do_ understand," Helena answered. "I once knew just such a person as you describe. We were school-mates, and she shocked us all on graduating day, by an anti-marriage address. So I can understand the type of woman you describe. Yet these views of hers did not necessitate the grave course of action you suggested to her later on, surely."