for it,--to pass
them, for one hour, for one moment, for love's sake, for grief's sake,
or for shame's, or for pity's own,--I was forbidden.

I had confided the circumstances of my parting from my wife to no one
of my new acquaintances. In the high order of character pervading
these happy people, such a confession would have borne the proportions
that a crime might in the world below. Bearing my secret in my own
heart, I felt like a felon in this holier society. I cherished it
guiltily and miserably, as solitary people do such things; it seemed to
me like an ache which I should go on bearing for ever. I remembered
how men on earth used to trifle with a phrase called endless
punishment. What worse punishment were there, verily, than the
consciousness of having done the sort of deed that I had? It seemed to
me, as I brooded over it, one of the saddest in the universe. I became
what I should once have readily called "morbid" over this thought.
There seemed to me nothing in the nature of remorse itself which
should, if let alone, ever come to a visible end. My longing for the
forgiveness of my wife gnawed upon me.

Sometimes I tried to remind myself that I was as sure of her love and
of her mercy as the sun was of rising beyond the linden that tapped the
chamber window in my dear lost home; that her unfathomable tenderness,
so far passing the tenderness of women, leaned out, as ready to take me
back to itself as her white arms used to be to take me to her heart,
when I came later than usual, after a hard day's work, tired and
weather-beaten, into the house, hurrying and calling to her.

"Helen? Helen?"

But the anguish of the thought blotted the comfort out of it, till, for
very longing for her, I would fain almost have forgotten her; and then
I would pray never to forget her before I had forgotten, for I loved
her so that I would rather think of her and suffer because of her than
not to think of her at all. In all this memorable and unhappy period,
my boy was the solace of my soul. I gave myself to the care of him
lovingly, and as nearly as I can recollect I did not chafe against the
narrow limits of my lot in that respect.

It occurred to me sometimes that I should once have called this a
humble service to be the visible boundary of a man's life. To what had
all those old attainments come? Command of science? Developed skill?
Public power? Extended fame? All those forms of personality which go
with