“You are a man,” said Glory, “and I thought perhaps----” But she could not speak of her fool's paradise now, she was so deeply ashamed and abased. “That's just the difficulty, my dear. If I were not a man, I might so easily help you.” What did he mean? The frogs kept croaking at the margin of the lake, disturbed by the sound of their footsteps. “Whatever you were to tell me to do I should do it,” she said, in the same confused murmur. She was ruining herself with every word she uttered. He drew up and stood before her, so close that she could feel his breath, on her face. “My dear Glory,” he said passionately, “don't think it isn't terrible to me to renounce the happiness of helping you, but I must not, I dare not, I will not take it.” She could scarcely breathe for the shame that took sudden hold of her. “Heaven knows I would give anything to have the joy of looking after your happiness, dear, but I should despise myself forever if I took advantage of your circumstances.” Good God! What did he think she had been asking of him? “I am thinking of yourself, Glory, because I want to esteem you and honour you, and because your good name is above everything else--everything else in the world.” Her shame was now abject. It stifled her, deafened her, blinded her. She could not speak or hear or see. He took her hand and pressed it. “Let me go,” she stammered. “Stay--do not go yet!” “Let me go, will you?” “One moment----” But with a cry like the cry of a startled bird she disappeared in the shadow of the trees. He stood a moment where she had left him, tingling in every nerve, wanting to follow her, and overtake her, and kiss her, and abandon everything. But he buttoned up his overcoat and turned away, telling himself that whatever another man might have done in the same case he at least had done rightly, and that men like John Storm were wrong if they thought it was impossible to act on principle without the impulse of religion. Meanwhile Glory was flying through the darkness and weeping in the bitterness of her disappointment and shame. The big trees overhead were all black now and very gaunt and grim, and the breeze was moaning in their branches. “I had disgrace enough already,” she thought; “I might have spared myself a degradation like this!” Drake had supposed that she came to plead for herself to-night as she had pleaded for Polly a week ago. How natural that he should think so! How natural and yet how hideous! “I hate him! I hate him!” she thought. John Storm had been right. In their heart of hearts these men of society had only one idea about a girl, and she had stumbled on it unawares. They never thought of her as a friend and an equal, but only as a dependent and a plaything, to be taken or left as they liked. “Oh, how shameful to be a woman--how shameful, how shameful!”