'Circumstances. Yes, I am the victim of circumstances.' 'There is no such thing,' said Gladys calmly. 'That is a phrase with which people console themselves in misfortunes they often bring upon themselves. If you would only think of the absurdity of what you are saying. You have admitted your prosperity; and the other troubles, home troubles, which I know are very trying, need not overwhelm you. You are much less manly, Walter, now you are a man, than I expected you to be. You have quite disappointed me, and without reason.' He was surprised, and could not hide it. The gentle, simple, shrinking girl had changed into a self-reliant, keen-sighted woman, and from the serene height of her gracious womanhood calmly convicted him of his folly and his besetting weakness, and, manlike, his first impulse, thus convicted, was to resent her interference. 'Whatever I may do, it can't affect you now, you are so far removed from me,' he said, without looking at her; and Gladys, disappointed, and a little indignant, rose to go. 'Very well; good-bye. It is always the same kind of good-bye,' she said quietly. 'If ever, when you look back upon it, it should grieve you, remember it was always your doing, yours alone. But even yet, though you may not believe it, Walter, your old friend will remain quite unchanged.' His face flushed, and he dashed his hand with a hasty gesture across his eyes. 'I am not changed,' he said huskily. 'You need not reproach me with that. You know nothing about the struggle it is for me here, nor what I have to fight against. It was you who taught me first to be discontented with my lot, to strive after something higher. I sometimes wish now that we had never met.' 'Whatever happens, Walter, I shall never wish that; and I hope one day you will be sorry for ever having said such a thing,' she said, with a proud ring in her clear, sweet voice. 'I hope--I hope one day everything will be made right; just now it all seems so very wrong and hard to bear.' She left him hurriedly then, just as she had left him before, at the moment when he could have thrown himself at her feet, and revealed to her all the surging passion of his soul.