her to be an angel rather than a mere man; and in sheer remorse she
might cry, "I am yours!" Vain though Tommy was, the picture gave him
not a moment's pleasure. Alarm was what he felt.

Of course he was exaggerating Grizel's feelings. She had too much
self-respect and too little sentiment to be willing to marry any man
because she had unintentionally wronged him. But this was how Tommy
would have acted had he happened to be a lady. Remorse, pity, no one
was so good at them as Tommy.

In his perturbation he was also good at maidenly reserve. He felt
strongly that the proper course for Grizel was not to refer to the
glove--to treat that incident as closed, unless he chose to reopen it.
This was so obviously the correct procedure that he seemed to see her
adopting it like a sensible girl, and relief would have come to him
had he not remembered that Grizel usually took her own way, and that
it was seldom his way.

There were other ways of escape. For instance, if she would only let
him love her hopelessly. Oh, Grizel had but to tell him there was no
hope, and then how finely he would behave! It would bring out all that
was best in him. He saw himself passing through life as her very
perfect knight. "Is there no hope for me?" He heard himself begging
for hope, and he heard also her firm answer: "None!" How he had always
admired the outspokenness of Grizel. Her "None!" was as splendidly
decisive as of yore.

The conversation thus begun ran on in him, Tommy doing the speaking
for both (though his lips never moved), and feeling the scene as
vividly as if Grizel had really been present and Elspeth was not.