the early
morning light. I thought how I had kissed you--how pale and gray and
thin you looked. Oh, how I loathed myself! That I should think it could
be God's will that I should leave you, or torture you, my poor husband!
I had not only been wicked towards you--I had offended Christ. I could
think of nothing as I lay there--again and again--but "_Little children,
love one another; little children, love one another._" Oh, my
beloved,'--and she looked up with the solemnest, tenderest smile
breaking on the marred tear-stained face,--'I will never give up hope, I
will pray for you night and day. God will bring you back. You cannot
lose yourself so. No, no! His grace is stronger than our wills. But I
will not preach to you--I will not persecute you--I will only live
beside you--in your heart--and love you always. Oh, how could I--how
could I have such thoughts!'

And again she broke off, weeping, as if to the tender torn heart the
only crime that could not be forgiven was its own offence against love.
As for him he was beyond speech. If he had ever lost his vision of God,
his wife's love would that moment have given it back to him.

'Robert,' she said presently, urged on by the sacred yearning to heal,
to atone, 'I will not complain--I will not ask you to wait. I take your
word for it that it is best not, that it would do no good. The only hope
is in time--and prayer. I must suffer, dear, I must be weak sometimes;
but oh, I am so sorry for you! Kiss me, forgive me, Robert; I will be
your faithful wife unto our lives' end.'

He kissed her, and in that kiss, so sad, so pitiful, so clinging, their
new life was born.

CHAPTER XXX

But the problem of these two lives was not solved by a burst of feeling.
Without that determining impulse of love and pity in Catherine's heart
the salvation of an exquisite bond might indeed have been impossible.
But in spite of it the laws of character had still to work themselves
inexorably out on either side.

The whole gist of the matter for Elsmere lay really in this question:
Hidden in Catherine's nature, was there, or was there not, the true
stuff of fanaticism? Madame Guyon left her infant children to the
mercies of chance, while she followed the voice of God to the holy war
with heresy. Under similar conditions Catherine Elsmere might have
planned the same. Could she ever have carried it out?

And yet the question is still ill stated. For the influences of our
modern time o