The Woman's Way by Charles Garvice

To return to Derrick Dene. When Isabel had left the van he lay, with a frown on his face, thinking sadly and troubled by a somewhat unreasonable remorse. He was not a vain man, but he knew that, all unwittingly, he had gained the love of this dark-browed, passionate girl. She was very beautiful; she had nursed him with the tenderness of a sister, a mother, a wife. Why should he not accept the gift which the gods were offering him? Why should he not make her his wife? Even as he put the question, the answer rose to confront him. He was in love with another woman, a girl he had seen once or twice only in his life--the girl at Brown's Buildings.

It was absurd, of course. He might never meet her again; it was more than probable that by this time some other man had discovered so great a prize; she might be engaged, married. The chances were that, though he had thought of her every day since he had left her, she had well-nigh forgotten him, or, at the best, thought of him as a foolish young man who had sacrificed himself for a mistaken sense of chivalry, the man whom she, a slip of a girl, had saved from suicide. Why, he told himself, any feeling she must have for him must be that of contempt. All the same, he loved her, and therefore this other woman could be nothing to him.