He spent the hours of her absence in moving from place to place,
fretting in mind. At one moment, he half determined to bring things
to some issue, by disregarding all considerations and urging his
love upon her. Yet this he felt he could not do. Surely--he asked
himself angrily he was not still so much in the thraldom of
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.
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