And yet his self-distrust was painfully and dangerously great, and he feared that when Annie came to know the worst about him, and how he had plotted against her, she would shrink from him. If she despaired of him he would despair of himself. He was certain that he could not win even an intimate congenial acquaintance, much less a more tender regard, unless he became a true, good man, worthy of her confidence. He could not become such by commencing in deception--by hiding the past, and trying to appear what he was not. For in the first place she would certainly find him out and despise him, and in the second place his own nature now revolted at anything false in his relations with her. After long anxious thought, he concluded that the only safe, as well as the only honorable, course was perfect frankness. If he began wrong, the end would be disastrous. He was no longer subject to school-boy impulses, but was a mature and thoughtful man, and had trained himself in business to look far and keenly into the consequences of present action. He saw in this Walton blood an intense antipathy to deceit. His own nature was averse to it also, and his experience with Hunting had made it doubly hateful. His pride revolted at it, for his lack of hypocrisy had been the one ground of self-respect that remained in him. If in his folly and wickedness he had blotted out the possibility of a happy future, he must endure the terrible truth as he could. To try to steal into heaven, earthly or celestial, by the back door of specious seeming, only to be discovered in his true character and cast out with greater ignominy, was a course as revolting as foolish. Annie knew him to be a man of the world, with sceptical tendencies, but to her guileless nature and inexperience this might not mean anything very bad. In the secret of his own soul, however, he had to meet these terrible questions: