'You know how dear, more dear than any earthly thing, you have been ever to me,' he wrote, 'therefore you will pardon me what I am about to say. If I had followed my own selfish desires I should have entreated you to disgrace him publicly, begged you to shake off publicly all bonds to a traitor; and I should have shot him dead, with or without the formula of a quarrel; he himself knew that well. But for your own sake I would say to you now, pardon him if you can. Though you are the possessor of a position and of a character rare amongst women, yet even you must suffer as a separated wife. The children as they grow older will suffer from it likewise. You could divorce your husband; the Law and the Church would set you free from an union contracted in ignorance with a man guilty of a fraud. You would be free, and he would endure his fit chastisement. But I understand why you refuse to do that. I comprehend your feeling. Publicity would to you intensify disgrace. Divorce could do nothing to heal your cruel wounds. Therefore I urge on you forgiveness. It has cost me many months' bitter struggle to be able to write this to you. His offence is vile. His past is hateful. He himself merits nothing. But for your commands I would have set my heel on his throat as on a snake's. But there may have been excuses even for him; and since you acknowledge him as your husband you will, in the end, be more at peace if you do not continue to insist on a separation which will be food for the world's calumny. Besides, though you know it not, you have not exiled him from your heart, though you have sent him from your house. If you had not still loved him you would have said to me—Slay him. I believe that he loved you, though he had such foul guilt against you, and he must have some true qualities of character and mind since he satisfied yours for many long years. Of where he may be now I know not. Since I saw you I have not quitted my own country. But I would say to you—wherever he be, send for him. You will understand without words what it costs me to say to you—Since you will not accept the freedom of the Law, summon him to you and cleanse his soul in yours. I speak for you, not him. If I saw him lying dead like a dog in a ditch, for myself, I should thank God. Sometimes I look with stupor at my sword. Can it lie idle there and you be unavenged?'
The letter touched her profoundly. She realised the grandeur of generosity, the force of compelling duty, which had enabled Vàsàrhely to write it, proudest of gentlemen as he was, most devoted of lovers as he had been.
She replied to him:
'I have thought myself strong, but of late years I have found that there are things beyond my strength; what you counsel is one of them. Religion enjoins, indeed, forgiveness without limit; but there are wrongs for which religion makes no provision, and of which it has no comprehension. Nevertheless, I thank you for him and for myself.'
Any crime, any folly, any violence or faithlessness, which yet should have left his honour pure, she thought it would have been possible to condone; the life of a woman who loves must ever be one long pardon. But such shame as this of his ate into her very soul, as rust into the pure metal. It was such shame that when her heart went out to what she had once loved in the yearning of affection, she felt herself disgraced, feeling that the dominion of the senses, the weakness of remembered and desired joys made her oblivious of indignity, feeble as an enamoured fool.
Her friends, her priests, even her own conscience might say to her 'Forgive,' but she could not bend her will to do it. Forgiveness would mean reconciliation, union, life spent together as in their days of love. She could not bring herself to endure that perpetual contact, that incessant communion. To her sight he was stained with a moral leprosy. She could not consent to admit that one in spiritual health, and clean of guilt, must dwell with one spiritually diseased.
[CHAPTER XLI.]
Another year passed by, and of him she still heard nothing. As, once before, his silence had told her of his passion more eloquently than speech could have done, so now the same silence tended to soften her wrath, to soothe her horror. She had expected him to take one of two courses: either to assail her with written entreaties for pardon, and ceaseless efforts to palliate his crime in her sight, or to go out into the world of men to seek oblivion in pleasure, and perhaps absolution in ambition.
He had done neither.