'

Strange ending to a day of torture! As she towered above him in the
dimness, white and pure and drooping, her force of nature all dissolved,
lost in this new heavenly weakness of love, he thought of the man who
passed through the place of sin, and the place of expiation, and saw at
last the rosy light creeping along the East, caught the white moving
figures, and that sweet distant melody rising through the luminous air,
which announced to him the approach of Beatrice and the nearness of
those 'shining tablelands whereof our God Himself is moon and sun.' For
eternal life, the ideal state, is not something future and distant.
Dante knew it when he talked of '_quella que imparadisa la mia mente_.'
Paradise is here, visible and tangible by mortal eyes and hands,
whenever self is lost in loving, whenever the narrow limits of
personality are beaten down by the inrush of the Divine Spirit.

CHAPTER XLIV

The saddest moment in the lives of these two persons whose history we
have followed for so long was over and done with. Henceforward to the
end Elsmere and his wife were lovers as of old.

But that day and night left even deeper marks on Robert than on
Catherine. Afterwards she gradually came to feel, running all through
his views of life, a note sterner, deeper, maturer than any present
there before. The reasons for it were unknown to her, though sometimes
her own tender, ignorant remorse supplied them. But they were hidden
deep in Elsmere's memory.

A few days afterwards he was casually told that Madame de Netteville had
left England for some time. As a matter of fact he never set eyes on her
again. After a while the extravagance of his self-blame abated. He saw
things as they were--without morbidness. But a certain boyish
carelessness of mood he never afterwards quite recovered. Men and women
of all classes, and not only among the poor, became more real and more
tragic--moral truths more awful--to him. It was the penalty of a
highly-strung nature set with exclusive intensity towards certain
spiritual ends.

On the first opportunity after that conversation with Hugh Flaxman which
had so deeply affected her, Catherine accompanied Elsmere to his Sunday
lecture. He tried a little, tenderly, to dissuade her. But she went,
shrinking and yet determined.

She had not heard him speak in public since that last sermon of his in
Murewell Church, every detail of which by long brooding had been burnt
into her mind. Th