Meanwhile, Langham was standing heavily, looking out into the night. The different elements in the mountain of discomfort that weighed upon him were so many that the weary mind made no attempt to analyze them. He had a sense of disgrace, of having stabbed something gentle that had leant upon him, mingled with a strong intermittent feeling of unutterable relief. Perhaps his keenest regret was that, after all it had not been love! He had offered himself up to a girl’s just contempt, but he had no recompense in the shape of a great addition to knowledge, to experience. Save for a few doubtful moments at the beginning, when he had all but surprised himself in something more poignant, what he had been conscious of had been nothing more than a suave and delicate charm of sentiment, a subtle surrender to one exquisite æsthetic impression after another. And these things in other relations, the world had yielded him before. ‘Am I sane?’ he muttered to himself. ‘Have I ever been sane? Probably not. The disproportion between my motives and other men’s is too great to be normal. Well at least I am sane enough to shut myself up. Long after that beautiful child has forgotten she ever saw me I shall still be doing penance in the desert.’ He threw himself down beside the open window with a groan. An hour later he lifted a face blanched and lined, and stretched out his band with avidity toward a book on the table. It was an obscure and difficult Greek text, and he spent the greater part of the night over it, rekindling in himself with feverish haste the embers of his one lasting passion. Meanwhile, in a room overhead, another last scene in this most futile of dramas was passing. Rose, when she came in, had locked the door, torn off her dress and her ornaments, and flung herself on the edge of her bed, her hands on her knees, her shoulders drooping, a fierce red spot on either cheek. There for an indefinite time she went through a torture of self-scorn. The incidents of the week passed before her one by one; her sallies, her defiances, her impulsive friendliness, the élan, the happiness of the last two days, the self-abandonment of this evening. Oh, intolerable--intolerable! And all to end with the intimation that she had been behaving like a forward child--had gone too far and must be admonished--made to feel accordingly! The poisoned arrow pierced deeper and deeper into the girl’s shrinking pride. The very foundations of self-respect seemed overthrown. Suddenly her eye caught a dim and ghostly reflection of her own figure, as she sat with locked hands on the edge of the bed, in a long glass near, the only one of the kind which the Rectory household possessed. Rose sprang up, snatched at the candle, which was flickering in the air of the open window, and stood erect before the glass, holding the candle above her heart.