Page:Confidence (London, Macmillan & Co., 1921).djvu/164

 she had settled, in his recollection. The wrong was a right, doubtless, from certain points of view; but from the girl's own it could only seem an injury, to which its having been inflicted by a clever young man with whom she had been on agreeable terms, necessarily added a touch of baseness.

In every disadvantage that a woman suffers at the hands of a man, there is inevitably, in what concerns the man, an element of cowardice. When I say "inevitably," I mean that this is what the woman sees in it. This is what Bernard believed that Angela Vivian saw in the fact that, by giving his friend a bad account of her, he had prevented her making an opulent marriage. At first he had said to himself that, whether he had held his tongue or spoken, she had already lost her chance; but with time, somehow, this reflexion had lost its weight in the scale. It conveyed little reassurance to his irritated conscience—it had become imponderable and impertinent. At the moment of which I speak it entirely failed to present itself, even for form's sake; and as he sat looking at this handsome girl who came back to him out of an episode of his past, he thought of her simply as an unprotected woman towards whom he had been indelicate. It is not an agreeable thing for a delicate man like Bernard Longueville to have to accommodate himself to such an admonition, but this is nevertheless what it seemed needful that he should do. If she bore him a grudge he must think it natural; if she vowed him a hatred he must allow her the comfort of it. He had done the only thing possible, but that made it no better for her. He had wronged her. The circumstances mattered nothing, and as he could not make it up to her, the only reasonable thing was to keep out of her way. He had stepped into her path now, and the proper thing was to step out 156