Who can estimate the force of the conflict that raged in her bosom, between her passion and her conscience? Between her love and her duty? Between what she knew of her worshiped husband, from daily association, and what she had just heard proved upon him by overwhelming testimony, confirmed also by the evidence of her own too long discredited senses!
He—her Apollo—her ideal of all manly excellence—her archangel, as in the infatuation of her passion she had called him—he a bigamist, and an accomplice in the murder of her father!
It was incredible! incomprehensible! maddening!
Or surely it was some awful nightmare dream, from which she must soon awake.
What should she do? How meet again the people below?
She would not look upon his face again. She could not. She felt that to do so would be perdition.
In the darkness of her despair a great temptation assailed her.
But we must leave her alone to wrestle with the demon, while we join the wedding-party below.