conventionality as to be affected by his fresh reminder of her
position and antecedents? Perhaps not quite so much prejudice as
experience which disturbed him. He was well acquainted with the
characteristics of girls of this class; he knew how all but
impossible it is for them to tell the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth. And there was one thing particularly in Ida's
story that he found hard to credit; was it indeed likely that she
had not felt more than she would confess for this man whose mistress
she became so easily? If she had _not_, if what she said were true,
was not this something like a proof of her lack of that refined
sentiment which is, the capacity for love, in its real sense?
Torturing doubts and reasonings of this kind once set going in a
brain already confused with passion, there is no limit to the range
of speculation opened; Waymark found himself--in spite of
everything--entertaining all his old scepticism. In any case, had
he the slightest ground for the hope that she might ever feel to him
as warmly as he did to her? He could not recall one instance of
Ida's having betrayed a trace of fondness in her intercourse with
him. The mere fact of their intercourse he altogether lost sight of.
Whereas an outsider would, under the circumstances, have been
justified in laying the utmost stress on this, Waymark had grown to
accept it as a matter of course, and only occupied himself with
Ida's absolute self-control, her perfect calmness in all situations,
the ease with which she met his glance, the looseness of her hand in
his, the indifference with which she heard him when he had spoken of
his loneliness and frequent misery. Where was the key of her
character? She did not care for admiration; it was quite certain
that she was not leading him about just to gratify her own vanity.
Was it not purely an intellectual matter? She was a girl of superior
intellect, and, having found in him some one with whom she could