ld wouldn't understand. And one has to avoid the appearance
of evil."

"They may say anything they please. I should be very proud if they
misjudged me for your sake."

Then a thought suddenly pierced her. What would they say about his
honour? Would the world misjudge him? Her weakness became strength under
coercion of this new possibility; her cheeks burned at the light thrown
upon her first selfish impulse.

"O, why have I said such things?" she said, tearing herself away from
him, "and I used to think once that women like me were too bad to live.
I used to wonder how they could be so evil. That was because I had
never been tempted. And now I see how hard it is--how hard to fight. It
is so easy to judge others when you are married to some one you love.
But I begin to understand now--I ought to hide myself in a cell and pray
till I die for women who are unhappy."

She pushed back the soft golden hair which had fallen a little over her
face, brightening its sorrow. Every feature quivered under the invisible
cutting hand of cruel experience. In those last sharp moments of
introspection she had gained such a knowledge of suffering that a fire
seemed to have consumed her vision of life, reducing it to a frightful
desert of eternal woe and unavailing sacrifice. Partially stunned, and
partially blinded by misery, she felt the awful helplessness and pain of
what is sometimes called the second birth, a crisis in all human
development when the first true realisation comes that the soul is a
stranger, a rebel, strong as eternity, weak as the flesh, free as the
illimitable air.

"O, I do understand!" she said. "I have been pretending to myself that
we could do impossible things. But I didn't want to speak my own
death-warrant. No, don't come to me. Don't say one word to me. I know so
well now what must be done. We mustn't hesitate--we mustn't think. It is
something to know where you can't trust yourself. I can't trust my heart
at this moment. So I must just depend on the things I have been
taught--things which I accepted, oh, so easily, when I applied them to
other people. You must go away. You must leave me here with the
servants. Esther is good and kind. Pensee chose her for me. You can
leave me with her."

She supported herself by holding, in a desperate grasp, the heavy silk
draperies by the window. The image of her, leaning against the faded
scarlet curtain, tall, fragile, yet resolute, with heaving breast,
closed eye