“Only this—tell your husband the truth—however painful, however humiliating the confession. That will be your best atonement. That is the sacrifice which will help to reconcile you with your God. You cannot hope for God’s love and pardon hereafter, if you live and die as a hypocrite here. God’s saints were some of them steeped in the darkness of guilt before they became the children of light—but there was not one of them who shrank from the confession of his sins.”
“You are a man,” sobbed Isola. “You do not know what it is for a woman to confess that she is unworthy of her husband’s love. You do not know. It is not possible for a man to know the meaning of shame.”
“You are wrong there,” he said, gently lifting her from the ground, and placing her beside him on the bank. “What chastity is to a woman, honour is to a man. Men have had to stand up before their fellow-men and acknowledge their violation of man’s code of honour; knowing that such acknowledgment made them dirt, and very dirt, in the sight of honourable men. You, as a woman, know not how deep men’s scorn cuts a man who has sinned against the law which governs gentlemen. A woman thinks there is no such sting as the sting of her shame. Men know better. Yes, I know that it will be most bitter, more bitter than death—for you to tell Colonel Disney that you are not what you have seemed to him; but apart from all considerations of duty, do not his love and devotion deserve the sacrifice of self-love on your part? Can you bear yourself to the last, as a virtuous wife—enjoying his respect—knowing that it is undeserved——”
“I will tell him—at the last,” she faltered. “In that parting hour I shall not shrink from telling him all—how I sinned against him—almost unawares—drifting half unconsciously into a fatal entanglement—and then—and then—against my will—in my weakness and helplessness—alone in the power of the man I loved—betrayed into sin. Oh God! why do you make me remember?” she cried wildly, turning upon the priest in passionate reproachfulness. “For years I have been trying to forget—trying to blank out the past—praying, praying, praying that my humble, tearful love for my husband and my child might cancel those hours of sin. And you come to me, and question me, and on pretence of saving my soul, you force me to look back upon that bygone horror—to live again through that time of madness—the destruction of my life. Cruel, cruel, cruel!”
“Forgive me!” said Father Rodwell, very gently, seeing that she was struggling with hysteria. “I have been too hard, perhaps, too eager to convince you of the right! There are some men, even of my sacred calling, who would judge your case otherwise—who would say the husband is happy in his ignorance; the wife has repented of her sin. Non quieta movere. But it is not in my nature to choose the easy pathways; and it may be that I am too severe a teacher. We will not talk any more about serious things to-day. Only believe that I am your friend—your sincere and devoted friend. If I have spoken hard things, be assured I would have spoken in the same spirit had you been my own sister. Let us say no more yet awhile—and perhaps when you have thought over our interview to-day you will come to see things almost as I see them. I won’t press the matter. I will leave your own heart and conscience to plead with you. And now may I walk home with you, before the beauty of the afternoon begins to fade?”
“The vetturino will be waiting for me at the gate,” Isola answered, with a dull, dead voice, rising languidly, and adjusting the loosened hair about her forehead with tremulous fingers.
She had thrown off her hat a little while before, and now she took it up, and straightened the loops of ribbon with a nervous touch here and there, and then put the hat on again, and arranged the gossamer veil, which she hoped might hide her swollen eyelids and tear-stained cheeks.
“If Martin should come to meet me, what will he think? she said piteously.
“Let me go with you, and I may be able to distract his attention—if you don’t want him to see that you have been crying.”
“No, no. He must not see. He would wonder, and question me—and guess, perhaps—as you did just now. How was it you knew—what made you guess?” she asked, with a sense of rebellion against this man who had pierced the veil behind which she had been hiding herself so long.