What it cost him to come to this resolution of casting her adrift, none save Heaven knew. The struggle remained on his memory for years afterwards as the sorest pain life had ever brought him. It was the bitter turning-point which too many of us have to arrive at, and pass; the dividing link which dashes away the sunny meads, the flowery paths of life's young romance, and sends us stumbling and shivering down the stony road of reality. None knew, none ever would know, what that struggle was to Oswald Cray. Not a struggle as to the course he should pursue--the breaking off intimacy with her: never for a single moment did he hesitate in that. The struggle lay with his feelings, with his own heart, where she was entwined with its every fibre, part and parcel of its very self. He strove to put her out thence, and she would not be put out. There she remained, and he was conscious that there she would remain for many a dreary year to come. But for his overweening pride, how different things might have been! He was too just a man to include Sara in the doctor's--dare he say it?--crime. Although Neal had said that Miss Sara Davenal had been made cognisant of it, Oswald did not visit upon her one iota of blame. She was no more responsible for the doctor's acts than he was, neither could she help them. No, he did not cast a shadow of reproach upon her; she had done nothing to forfeit his love; but she was her father's daughter, and therefore no fit wife for him. One whose pride was less in the ascendant than Mr. Oswald Cray's, whose self-esteem was less sensitively fastidious, might have acted upon this consciousness of her immunity from blame, and set himself to see whether there was not a way out of the dilemma rather than have given her up, off-hand, at the very first onset. He might have gone in his candour to Dr. Davenal and said, "I love your daughter; I had wished to make her my wife; tell me confidentially, is there a reason why I, an honourable man, should not?" Not so Mr. Oswald Cray and his haughty pride. Without a single moment of hesitation he shook himself free from all future contact with the daughter of Dr. Davenal, just as he was trying to shake her from his heart. Never more, never more, might he look forward to the life of happiness he had been wont to picture.