For hours he tossed and turned and revolved these problems. Rain
beat on the leaded panes of the Waterton dormers. Day dawned, but
no light came with it to his troubled spirit. The more he thought
of this dilemma, the more profoundly he shrank from the idea of
allowing himself to be made into the instrument for what the world
would call, after its kind, Herminia's shame and degradation. For
even if the world could be made to admit that Herminia had done
what she did from chaste and noble motives,--which considering what
we all know of the world, was improbable,--yet at any rate it could
never allow that he himself had acted from any but the vilest and
most unworthy reasons. Base souls would see in the sacrifice he
made to Herminia's ideals, only the common story of a trustful
woman cruelly betrayed by the man who pretended to love her, and
would proceed to treat him with the coldness and contempt with
which such a man deserves to be treated.
As the morning wore on, this view of the matter obtruded itself
more and more forcibly every moment on Alan.
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