"Laura!"—his voice dropped—"I want you to know it all, to understand me through and through. I will try that there shall not be a word to offend you. That scene I have described to you was for me only the beginning of another apostasy. I had no longer the excuse of doubt. I believed and trembled. But for two years after that, I was every day on the brink of ruining my own soul—and another's. The first, the only woman I ever loved before I saw you, Laura, I loved in defiance of all law—God's or man's. If she had struggled one heartbeat less, if God had let me wander one hair's breadth further from His hand, we had both made shipwreck—hopeless, eternal shipwreck. Laura, my little Laura, am I hurting you so?"
She gave a little sob, and mutely, with shut eyes, she raised her face towards him. He stooped and very tenderly and gravely kissed her cheek.
"But God's mercy did not fail!" he said or rather murmured. "At the last moment that woman—God rest her soul!—God bless her for ever!——"
He took off his hat, and bent forward silently for a moment.
—"She died, Laura, more than ten years ago!—At the last moment she saved both herself and me. She sent for one of my old Jesuit masters at Stonyhurst, a man who had been a great friend of Father Lewin's and happened to be at that moment in Brussels. He came. He brought me her last farewell, and he asked me to go back with him that evening to join a retreat that he was holding in one of the houses of the order near Brussels. I went in a sullen state, stunned and for the moment submissive.
"But the retreat was agony. I could take part in nothing. I neglected the prescribed hours and duties; it was as though my mind could not take them in, and I soon saw that I was disturbing others.
"One evening—I was by myself in the garden at recreation hour—the father who was holding the retreat came up to me, and sternly asked me to withdraw at once. I looked at him. 'Will you give me one more day?' I said. He agreed. He seemed touched. I must have appeared to him a miserable creature.
"Next day this same father was conducting a meditation—on 'the condescension of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.' I was kneeling, half stupefied, when I heard him tell a story of the Curé d'Ars. After the procession of Corpus Christi, which was very long and fatiguing, someone pressed the Curé to take food. 'I want nothing,' he said. 'How could I be tired? I was bearing Him who bears me!' 'My brothers,' said Father Stuart, turning to the altar, 'the Lord who bore the sin of the whole world on the Cross, who opens the arms of His mercy now to each separate sinful soul, is there. He beseeches you by me, "Choose, My children, between the world and Me, between sin and Me, between Hell and Me. Your souls are Mine: I bought them with anguish and tears. Why will ye now hold them back from Me—wherefore will ye die?"'
"My whole being seemed to be shaken by these words. But I instantly thought of Marie. I said to myself, 'She is alone—perhaps in despair. How can I save myself, wretched tempter and coward that I am, and leave her in remorse and grief?' And then it seemed to me as though a Voice came from the altar itself, so sweet and penetrating that it overpowered the voice of the preacher and the movements of my companions. I heard nothing in the chapel but It alone. 'She is saved!' It said—and again and again, as though in joy, 'She is saved—saved!'
"That night I crept to the foot of the crucifix in my little cell. 'Elegi, elegi: renuntio!'—I have chosen: I renounce.' All night long those alternate words seemed to be wrung from me."