's name, indeed! _That_ horror
she should never know. But it was to it, as he held his wife, he owed
his poignant sense of something half-jeopardised and wholly recovered;
it was that consciousness in the background of his mind, ignorant of it
as Catherine was then and always, which gave the peculiar epoch-making
force to this sacred and critical hour of their lives. But she would
hear nothing of his self-blame--nothing. She put her hand across his
lips.

'I have seen things as they are, Robert,' she said very simply; 'while I
have been sitting here, and downstairs, after Mr. Flaxman left me. You
were right--I _would_ not understand. And, in a sense, I shall never
understand. I cannot change,' and her voice broke into piteousness. 'My
Lord is my Lord always; but He is yours too. Oh, I know it, say what you
will! _That_ is what has been hidden from me; that is what my trouble
has taught me; the powerlessness, the worthlessness, of words. _It is
the spirit that quickeneth._ I should never have felt it so, but for
this fiery furnace of pain. But I have been wandering in strange places,
through strange thoughts. God has not one language, but many. I have
dared to think He had but one, the one I knew. I have dared'--and she
faltered--'to condemn your faith as no faith. Oh! I lay there so long in
the dark downstairs, seeing you by that bed; I heard your voice, I crept
to your side. Jesus was there, too. Ah, He was--He was! Leave me that
comfort! What are you saying? Wrong--you? Unkind? Your wife knows
nothing of it. Oh, did you think when you came in just now before dinner
that I didn't care, that I had a heart of stone? Did you think I had
broken my solemn promise, my vow to you that day at Murewell? So I have,
a hundred times over. I made it in ignorance; I had not counted the
cost--how could I? It was all so new, so strange. I dare not make it
again, the will is so weak, circumstances so strong. But oh! take me
back into your life! Hold me there! Remind me always of this night;
convict me out of my own mouth! But I _will_ learn my lesson; I will
learn to hear the two voices, the voice that speaks to you and the voice
that speaks to me--I must. It is all plain to me now. It has been
appointed me.'

Then she broke down into a kind of weariness, and fell back in her
chair, her delicate fingers straying with soft childish touch over his
hair.

'But I am past thinking. Let us bury it all, and begin again. Words are
nothing.