With the letter back at her breast again, all was undone once more. The door of the last few days seemed opened, as with a key. With this restored to her, and in her arms, all her courage came back; all her old steadfastness and fortitude; the blinded eyes of her spirit seemed opened. This very night, while the household slept, she should steal forth—as she had stolen forth in that first early dawn of her happiness—and make restitution of the letter. Under the door by the porch, or in at that familiar window—if only it were left unfastened—she should slip it. And with this letter must go a second—that she would write—making full confession of the offence, and humbling herself before him for his pardon and forgiveness. No longer did she desire to be clad in his presence with the garments of hypocrisy. Let him look upon her in the nakedness of her sin, for her soul's true chastening. Let nothing be hid from him. Rather now his proper scorn and loathing than his ill-gotten favor, as her unrighteousness had once sought to retain it. For his favor was no more hers, at this time, than the letter she held. Both had been gained by hypocrisy and fraud. Both must be restituted for the completion of her atonement.
And then her soul, walking forward with face glorious, saw the atonement done ... and passed beyond ... and stopped.
After the atonement.... What?
Lord have mercy on her! What?
Should she come back to this house, return to this bed, go on living this life of shame and dishonor, give herself ultimately into the arms of this man? Should she celebrate the sacrament of atonement this night, only to enter upon a fresh course of unrighteousness to-morrow?
Oh, no, no, no! She could not. A thousand times no! She could not.
By fraud he had got her. By cruelty he had broken her resistance. If she were going to pay openly for her sin, by just atonement before the proper tribunal, why need she pay a hundredfold in secret to this unrighteous extortioner? What she had undertaken to do she had done. She had bound herself by no promises, for he would not accept them from her. She had tied herself to him publicly, and pleaded with Father Mostyn as though she had been pleading for her life's blood; had submitted to the degradation of this man's authority ... only for the letter that she held. Rather than give herself up to him she would cast herself over the cliff and seek refuge in death.
And so thought ran on with her, and the further it traveled the further it seemed to take her away from the scene of her guilt and the man who had wronged her.
Yes, slowly but surely—as though, all along, it had been aware of its destination, and kept it only from the girl herself—her mind, traveling over its miles and miles of railed purpose, arrived at this dark terminus. She would go.
She wept when she saw at last where it was she must alight, and said good-by to herself as to a dear friend. But the parting was inevitable, and weeping, she bowed to it. To pour new wine of life into this old burst bottle of hers, how could she? Without open proclamation of the truth, her life in Ullbrig would but be days and hours and minutes of wicked, unbearable deception. But in a new place, away from the old sin and the old temptation, she might better succeed. She could never be happy again; that she knew. Happiness was gone from her for ever, but she could be good. Goodness should be her adopted child, in place of the one she had lost. The Spawer was good; like him she would try—oh, how patiently—to be.