“Lucy, do not kneel to me: kneel to your God.”
“God will forgive me,” she sobbed, turning her eyes toward heaven, “but, Lyman, you will not.”
She arose and came close to him, and gazed sorrowfully up into his face.
“You do not understand me,” said the captain. “My pity you already have, although it is worth but little. Pity comes from the heart, and my heart has been made poor with long and bitter suffering.”
“But, Lyman, have you no forgiveness for the penitent? Must I go out into the world alone, believing that you will never forgive my sins? I do not ask you to compromise yourself by forgetting them; but, oh, will you not tell me that you forgive them?”
Captain Osborn sighed, as if a scalding tear had fallen down into his withered heart. His eyes rested for a moment upon her, and then he walked thoughtfully back and forth. His just resentment struggled with his innate tenderness of soul. He returned to where she was standing and said, in a low, husky voice, “Lucy, you have sinned against yourself, against me, against our baby boy, and against God; but if your contrition can gain the forgiveness of the Infinite, it certainly should gain the forgiveness of a poor, finite being like myself.” He turned away, and for a moment seemed to be struggling for mastery over himself. “Lucy,” said he, “our paths from this night must lead in opposite directions; but as I, myself, hope to be forgiven in the world to come, where mortal souls are weighed in the unerring scales of justice, so I, in my poor, weak heart forgive you.”
She sobbed aloud in fervent thanksgiving for her escape. “Oh, Lyman, Lyman, my tears are now of joy, rather than of sorrow! I feel regenerated and purified. Your mercy means more than you know.” Her countenance grew strangely fair. A halo of light seemed to envelop her. A tear trembled on the cheek of the old veteran as he said, “Good night.”
At an early hour of the following morning the muffled stroke of church bells sounded thirty-six times.
Lucy Osborn was dead. A council of physicians said that death had come to her through heart failure, caused by some great mental strain.