"You need not want to forget any of it," said Roma, blushing, however, herself as she spoke; "I certainly did not think of you as you imagine. It has always been very pleasant to me to think that--that you thought me, even at first sight, trustworthy--fit to talk to as you did. The only unpleasing part of the remembrance to me is the thought of how it all ended for you, how terribly quickly your dreams faded. Forgive me," she went on, hastily, "I am afraid I have said too much. I have never alluded to it before." "I like your alluding to it," said Gerald. "I like the feeling that you understand it all. It doesn't hurt me in the least now. It is wonderful how one grows out of things, isn't it?--at least, hardly that; how things grow into one till one is no longer conscious of their existence. "I am a part of all that I have met. "You remember? Of course Eugenia had a great influence upon me. But for her I should probably have been quite a different sort of man. But still I can see the good it did me now without any bitterness. I am inexpressibly thankful that she is so much happier, that she seems to be growing into--_her_ life, as it were. When she was unhappy I must confess I was bitter--bitter to think I had no right to interfere. But that has all past by. I am rather lonely, that is about all I have any right to complain of. If she had not married it might have been different--there is a sort of doggedness about me--I believe I should have gone on hoping against hope. But as it is, I feel it rather hard sometimes." "What?" asked Roma, in some bewilderment. "Why, that I should be doomed to stay outside always, as it were. You don't suppose I have any dislike to the idea of being happy like other people? You don't suppose it is from choice I remain homeless and lonely, do you, Miss Eyrecourt?" He looked at her half laughingly, yet earnestly too. Roma's face fell. Then after all, she thought, her one hero was no hero; already his love for Eugenia was replaced by some other apparently equally hopeless attachment. It was disappointing. "Why do you look so grave?" he inquired. "Have I offended you?" "Offended _me_! What have I to do with it?" she replied. "Of course not. To tell you the truth I felt just a little disappointed--a nice confession for an unromantic person to make--that--that you _had_ `got over it,' as it is called, so completely. You were my model of constancy. I shall think life more prosaic than ever now. And, to turn to prose, what a pity you a second time made an unlucky venture! Could you not have been more prudent? That is to say, if the obstacles whose existence you infer _are_ insuperable. As to that, of course I can't judge." She quickened her steps a little as she spoke. It seemed to Gerald she was eager to make an end of the conversation. Amused, yet much annoyed at her misapprehension, his wish to right himself in her eyes drove him further than he had intended.