For what agony had been like unto his?
Since who could render him back on earth, or in the grave, that pure white soul he had believed in once? Yea—who? Not man; not even God.
Therefore had he suffered without hope.
She went away from the house and down the stairs, and out into the ruddy noon. She took her way by instinct to the orchard, and there sat down upon a moss-grown stone within the shadow of the leaves.
All sense was deadened in her under a deep unutterable pity.
From where she sat she could see the wicket window, the gabled end of the chamber, and where the linnet sang, and the yellow fruit of the pear-tree swung. All about was the drowsy hot weather of the fruit harvest; the murmur of bees; the sweep of the boughs in the water.
Never, in all the years that they had dwelt together beneath one roof, had any good word or fair glance been given her; he had nourished her on bitterness, and for his wage paid her a curse. Yet her heart was sore for him; and judged him without hatred.
All things seemed clear to her, now that a human love had reached her; and this man also, having loved greatly and been betrayed, became sanctified in her sight.
She forgot his brutality, his avarice, his hatred; she remembered only that he had loved, and in his love been fooled, and so had lost his faith in God and man, and had thus staggered wretchedly down the darkness of his life, hating himself and every other, and hurting every other human thing that touched him, and crying ever in his blindness, "O Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief!"
And now he was dead.