From the moment, however, that the rescuer said to her that Maurice had saved her life, her feeling was changed. She felt that she had failed to do Wynne justice; that she had allowed his cassock to be the sign of a lack of manhood; she accused herself of having wronged him. She began now to exalt him in her thoughts, and to regard him as a hero. She had long been aware of the effect that she had on him. From the morning when she had encountered him at the North End, and had met the quick, troubled glance of his eye, full of doubt and of fire, she had been conscious that he was not indifferent to her presence. She had not reasoned about it; but it gave her pleasure. It was a passing breath of homage, pleasing like a breath from some rose-bed passed in a walk. Up to the moment, however, when she said to herself that he had risked his life for her, Berenice had never consciously thought of Maurice as a lover. When she saw him lying insensible, depending upon her, a new feeling kindled in her breast. She would not think of it; she shrank from it, and refused to acknowledge it to herself. Yet for her the world was altered, and however she might try to hide the fact from her heart, secretly she felt it fluttering and throbbing deep within her breast. When the telegram came in the morning announcing the visit of Stanford, her first thought was one of gratification. The act was friendly, and it gave her a pleasant sense of importance. The reaction came instantly. The purport of the visit flashed upon her. She remembered how she had smiled on Stanford yesterday,--Yesterday that now seemed so far away that she looked back to it over distances of emotion which made it strangely remote. She felt that she must receive him; but she found herself seeking for the means of making him understand that what he hoped was forever impossible. She certainly could never marry him. She was sure that the thought could never have been seriously in her mind. The idea of belonging to him, of having no right to think of another man with tenderness, became all at once too repugnant to be endured. She would not consider why her attitude was so different from that of yesterday; she only insisted vehemently in her thought that now first she really knew her own mind. Her cheek burned at the reflection that Stanford was probably sure of her consent to be his. It seemed to give him a claim upon her; to shut the door upon all other possibilities; to smutch the whiteness of her soul and render her unworthy of any man whom she might some day come to love. To remember that in her secret thought she had actually contemplated being Stanford's wife made her cringe.