She turned to leave the terrace, but he arrested the movement, and placed himself before her.
“You misinterpret my silence, if you suppose it was employed in censuring your course. Pondering all that you have recapitulated, I can conjecture no line of conduct towards your husband less deplorable than that which you have pursued; and I honor the stern honesty and integrity of purpose from which you have never swerved. Mrs. Carlyle, I acquit you of all guilt, save that of impious defiance, of rebellion against your God, whose grace could sweeten even the bitter dregs of the cup you have well-nigh drained.”
At the sound of her name, so long unuttered, she winced and writhed as if some sensitive nerve had been suddenly pierced and torn; but without heeding her emotion, Dr. Grey continued,—
“If your earthly lot has been stinted of sunshine, can you not bear a little temporary gloom,—must you needs people it with adverse witnesses, must you thicken the darkness with imprecations? You forget that life is only the racecourse, not the goal,—that this world is for human souls what the plain of Dura proved for the Hebrew trio who braved its flames. Suppose you are lonely and bereft of the love that might have cheered you? Was not Christ far more isolated and loveless? In His fearful ordeal He was forsaken by God,—but to you remains the everlasting promise, ‘I will not leave you comfortless; I will come to you.’ O wretched woman! give your aching heart to Him who emptied it of earthly idols in order to fit it up for His own temple.
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‘Is God less God, that thou art left undone? Rise, worship, bless Him, in this sackcloth spun, As in that purple.’” |
Silently she listened, looking steadily up at his noble face, where intense mental anguish had left unwonted pallor, and printed new ciphers on brow and lips; and when his adjuration ended, she put out her hand.
“That you do not condemn me is the most precious consolation you could offer, for your good opinion is worth much 376 to my proud, sensitive soul. If all men were like you there would be no mutilated, ruined lives, such as mine,—no nominal wives roaming up and down the world in search of an obscure corner wherein to hide dishonored heads and crushed hearts. God grant you some day a wife worthy of the noblest man it has ever been my good fortune to meet. Good-by.”
He did not accept the offered hand, and stood for a moment as if struggling to master some impulse to which he could not yield. Perhaps he dared not trust the touch of those gleaming, slender fingers that had clasped a living husband’s; or perchance he was so absorbed by painful thoughts that he failed to observe them.
Laying his palm softly on her snowy head, he said tenderly,—