It was done. The unutterable thing was said. For once Audrey had been absolutely truthful and sincere. The soul that he had evoked had come forth as it were new-born out of the darkness.
At first neither of them spoke. Then he sat down and thanked her, simply, for what she had just told him. But to his own shame and grief he had nothing more to say. He had heard many a confession, and from many a guiltier woman's lips, but none so piteous, because none so purely spontaneous, as this. And to all he had given pity, counsel, and help.
But now he was dumb.
She was thirsting for help, for help that she could understand. She clasped her hands imploringly and looked into his face, but it had no pity for her and no deliverance. She could see nothing there but grief—grief terrible and profound.
"I see. Then you too judge me—like the rest."
"God forbid. I judge no man." Which was true, for it was the woman he had judged.
She looked at him again, a long look full of wonder and reproach; then she went quietly away.
She had reached the end of the narrow passage leading from the study to the front hall, when she recollected that she had left behind her a small manual of devotion. He had given it to her not long ago. She went back for it, and knocked softly at the study door. There was no answer, and supposing that he had gone through into the room beyond, she opened the door and looked in.
He was kneeling in the far corner of the study, with his hands stretched out before the crucifix. From the threshold where she stood she could see the agony of his uplifted face and hear his prayer. "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"
Audrey knew then that for one moment the love she had hungered and thirsted after, more than after righteousness, had been actually within her grasp, and that she had lost it. The shadow of an uncommitted sin stood between her and the one man by whom and for whom she could have grown pure and womanly and good. For Flaxman Reed had loved her, though up to that evening he had been in complete ignorance of the fact, being already wedded to what the world considers an impossible ideal.