‘Oh, nothing!’ he rejoined, and tried to laugh: it was a dreadful failure. ‘But I can’t bear to think of that mother of mine! I wish I could tell you all; but I can’t. How Brotherton would laugh at me now! I can’t be made quite like other people, Wilfrid! _You_ would never have been such a fool.’ ‘You are more delicately made than most people, Charley--“touched to finer issues,” as Shakspere says.’ ‘Who told you that?’ ‘I think a great deal about you. That is all you have left me.’ ‘I’ve been a brute, Wilfrid. But you’ll forgive me, I know.’ ‘With all my heart, if you’ll only put it in my power to serve you. Come, trust me, Charley, and tell me all about it. I shall not betray you.’ ‘I’m not afraid of that,’ he answered, and sunk into silence once more. I look to myself presumptuous and priggish in the memory. But I did mean truly by him. I began to question him, and by slow degrees, in broken hints, and in jets of reply, drew from him the facts. When at length he saw that I understood, he burst into tears, hid his face in his hands, and rocked himself to and fro. ‘Charley! Charley! don’t give in like that,’ I cried. ‘Be as sorry as you like; but don’t go on as if there was no help. Who has not failed and been forgiven--in one way if not in another?’ ‘Who is there to forgive me? My father would not. And if he would, what difference would it make? I have done it all the same.’ ‘But God, Charley--’ I suggested, hesitating. ‘What of him? If he should choose to pass a thing by and say nothing about it, that doesn’t undo it. It’s all nonsense. God himself can’t make it that I didn’t do what I did do.’ But with what truthful yet reticent words can I convey the facts of Charley’s case? I am perfectly aware it would be to expose both myself and him to the laughter of men of low development who behave as if no more _self-possession_ were demanded of a man than of one of the lower animals. Such might perhaps feel a certain involuntary movement of pitifulness at the fate of a woman first awaking to the consciousness that she can no more hold up her head amongst her kind: but that a youth should experience a similar sense of degradation and loss, they would regard as a degree of silliness and effeminacy below contempt, if not beyond belief. But there is a sense of personal purity belonging to the man as well as to the woman; and although I dare not say that in the most refined of masculine natures it asserts itself with the awful majesty with which it makes its presence known in the heart of a woman, the man in whom it speaks with most authority is to be found amongst the worthiest; and to a youth like Charley the result of actual offence against it might be utter ruin. In his case, however, it was not merely a consciousness of personal defilement which followed; for, whether his companions had so schemed it or not, he supposed himself more than ordinarily guilty. ‘I suppose I must marry the girl,’ said poor Charley with a groan.