He naturally saw much of Berenice, and he passed hours in brooding over thoughts of her. He was convinced that she was not engaged. She had spoken of Stanford's visit, and it had seemed to Wynne that she had conveyed the impression that her relations to the visitor were less intimate than might at first sight appear. If she were free--the thought made his heart beat, and he wondered if, had the circumstances been different, he might himself have won her. He tormented himself with all her ways and words; the smiles she gave him, the trifling attentions which were addressed to the guest, but which seemed to have a touch of something deeper, that might be due to her thinking of him as her preserver, but which might even go beyond that. There was a delicious torture in all this reverie, in these continual self-reproaches which involved the thought of her, the remembrance of how she had looked, how she had spoken, how she had moved. He became every day more hopelessly her slave, yet every day insisting more strongly to himself that he felt nothing more than warm friend. Once for a moment he tried to believe that his feeling was merely a desire for her spiritual good, that his attitude was that which it was proper for a priest to feel toward a beautiful and frivolous worldling; but the pretense was too ghastly, and he abandoned it with a shudder of disgust. He had moments, too, when he said to himself frankly, in defiance or in sorrow as the mood might be, that he loved her; but for the most part he tried to keep the assumption of simple friendship between him and bitter thought. He found great pleasure in Mrs. Morison. She was to him a revelation of possibilities of which he had never dreamed. It was a continual surprise to him to find himself so impressed by the wit, the wisdom, and the sanity of this fine old lady. He not only felt himself an ignorant and inexperienced boy beside her, but found himself shrinking from comparing with her the men whom he had followed as leaders. The ease of her manner, the completeness of her self-poise, her frank simplicity, high-bred and winning, delighted him, while the extent of her mental resources filled him with amazement.