Of course he could not see what was actually passing: he could but surmise, and a fevered, tortured brain is an uncertain counsellor.
He could not understand Ursula's attitude. The girlish weakness, the submission to the highest authority in the land born of centuries of tradition, the maidenly bashfulness at the monstrosity of the accusation, were so many little feminine traits which at this moment appeared to him as so many admissions of guilt.
He would have loved them at other times: loved them in her especially, because they were so characteristic of her simple nature, bred in the country, half woman and wholly child. Just now they were repellent to his pride, incomprehensible to his manhood, and for the first time his faith began to waver.
Pity him, my masters! for he suffered intensely.
Pity him, mistress, for he loved her with his whole soul.
Nay! do not sneer. Love-at-first-sight is a great and wonderful thing, and, more than that, it is real—genuinely, absolutely, completely real. But it is not immutable. It is the basis, the solid foundation of what will become the lasting passion. In itself it has one great weakness—the absence of knowledge.
Wessex loved with his soul, but not yet with his reason. How could he? Reason is always the last to fall into line with the other slaves of passion. At present he worshipped in her that which he had conceived her to be, and the very sublimity of this whole-hearted love was a bar to the existence of perfect trust and faith.
There had been a long silence whilst Ursula mounted the stairs and finally disappeared, but the rustle of her silk skirt did not penetrate through the solid panels of the closet door. Wessex did not know whether she had gone, or had been ordered to wait until Her Majesty had quitted the room. He wondered now how soon he would meet her, how she would look when she finally released him from this torture-chamber. He knew that he would not upbraid her, and feared but one awful eventuality, his own weakness if she were guilty.
Love such as his oft makes cowards of men.
To the Cardinal's poisoned shaft he paid but little heed. The weary soul had come to the end of its tether. It could not suffer more.