Then a thought suddenly pierced her. What would they say about his honour? Would the world misjudge him? Her weakness became strength under coercion of this new possibility; her cheeks burned at the light thrown upon her first selfish impulse.
“O, why have I said such things?” she said, tearing herself away from him, “and I used to think once that women like me were too bad to live. I used to wonder how they could be so evil. That was because I had never been tempted. And now I see how hard it is—how hard to fight. It is so easy to judge others when you are married to some one you love. But I begin to understand now—I ought to hide myself in a cell and pray till I die for women who are unhappy.”
She pushed back the soft golden hair which had fallen a little over her face, brightening its sorrow. Every feature quivered under the invisible cutting hand of cruel experience. In those last sharp moments of introspection she had gained such a knowledge of suffering that a fire seemed to have consumed her vision of life, reducing it to a frightful desert of eternal woe and unavailing sacrifice. Partially stunned, and partially blinded by misery, she felt the awful helplessness and pain of what is sometimes called the second birth, a crisis in all human development when the first true realisation comes that the soul is a stranger, a rebel, strong as eternity, weak as the flesh, free as the illimitable air.
“O, I do understand!” she said. “I have been pretending to myself that we could do impossible things. But I didn't want to speak my own death-warrant. No, don't come to me. Don't say one word to me. I know so well now what must be done. We mustn't hesitate—we mustn't think. It is something to know where you can't trust yourself. I can't trust my heart at this moment. So I must just depend on the things I have been taught—things which I accepted, oh, so easily, when I applied them to other people. You must go away. You must leave me here with the servants. Esther is good and kind. Pensée chose her for me. You can leave me with her.”
She supported herself by holding, in a desperate grasp, the heavy silk draperies by the window. The image of her, leaning against the faded scarlet curtain, tall, fragile, yet resolute, with heaving breast, closed eyes, and pallid lips, remained before him night and day for months, and though, in the process of time, the vividness of the picture waned, it lived always among his unforgettable impressions.
“You must leave me,” she said again.
“Yes, but I will come in the morning.”
“You will rest, you will try to sleep—for my sake.”
This time she lifted her head, and, turning towards him, met once more the glance which she felt must have called her to life had she been dead.
“You will come in the morning?”