"No one knows what it has been," she said hoarsely, sinking into a chair, trembling too much to stand. "I could not live through it again. I couldn't bear it, and I had to bear it."
"You will never have to bear it again," he said with compassion. "It is over and done with. You are going to be happy now."
"You have suffered too," she said, reddening.
"Not like you. It has been worst for you. I never guessed that you had felt my imprisonment so much as I see now by your face you have."
"Not have felt it! Not have suffered from it!" said Fay, amazed. "Michael, how could I help grieving day and night over it?"
The question almost rose to his lips, "Why then did you not release me?" But the words were not spoken. There is one pain which we need not bear, but which some of us never rest till we have drawn it upon ourselves, that of extorting from the one we love vain excuses, unconscious lies, feeble, inadequate explanations that explain nothing. Let be. The excuses, the lies, these shadows of the mind will vanish the moment Love lights his lamp. Till then their ghost-like presence, their semblance of reality but show that the chamber of the Beloved is dark.
Michael was silent. Though his body and mind were half dead, his spirit was alive and clear, moving swiftly where the spent mind could not follow.
"How could I help breaking my heart over the thought of you in prison?" said Fay again, wounded to the quick.
She stared at him, indignant tears smarting in her eyes. Another long look passed between them, on her side bewildered, pained, aghast at being so misunderstood, on his penetrating, melancholy, full of compassionate insight, that look which seems to herald the parting between two unequal natures, but which is in reality a perception that they have never met.
"I knew you would rejoice when I was set free," he said tranquilly, smiling at her. "Ah! Here are Magdalen and Wentworth. How radiant she looks!"