For here was Albert Charlton, bound by his vows to Helen Minorkey, with whom he had nothing in common, except in intellect, and already his sorrow was disclosing to him the shallowness of her nature, and the depth of his own; even now he found that she had no voice with which to answer his hungry cry for sympathy.

Already his betrothal was becoming a fetter, and his great mistake was disclosing itself to him.

The rude suspicion had knocked at his door before, but he had been able to bar it out.

Now it stared at him in the night, and he could not rid himself of it.

But he was still far enough from accepting the fact that the intellectual Helen Minorkey was destitute of all unselfish feeling.