effects of an act of weakness or passion that the sentimental and
goody-goody people talk of, in the majority of cases they don't exist.
After it, the human being concerned may be just the same as before.

Rachel was quite aware of this modern gospel. Only she was shut out from
adopting it in her own case by an invincible heredity, by the spirit of
her father in her, the saintly old preacher, whose uncompromising faith
she had witnessed and shared through all her young years. She might and
did protest that the faith was no longer hers. But it had stamped her.
She could never be wholly rid of its prejudices and repulsions. What
would her father have said to her divorce?--he with his mystical
conception of marriage? She dreaded to think. And as to that other
fact which weighed on her conscience, she seemed to hear herself
pleading--with tears!--"Father!--it wasn't my will--it was my
_weakness_!--Don't look at me so!"

And now, in addition, there was the pressure upon her of Ellesborough's
own high ideals and religious temper; of the ideals, also, of his family,
as he was tenderly and unconsciously revealing them. And, finally, there
was the daily influence of Janet's neighbourhood--Janet, so austere for
herself, so pitiful for others: Janet, so like Ellesborough in the
unconscious sternness of her moral outlook, so full, besides, of an
infinite sorrow for the sinner.

And between these two stood this variable, sensuous, woman's nature, so
capable both of good and evil. Rachel felt the burden of their virtues
too much for her, together with the sting of her own secret knowledge.

In some moments, even, she rebelled against her own passion. She had such
a moment of revolt, in this moonlit dark, as her eyes took in the farm,
the dim outlines of the farm buildings, the stacks, the new-ploughed
furrows. Two months earlier her life had been absorbed in simple, clear,
practical ambitions: how to improve her stock--how to grow another bushel
to the acre--how and when to build a silo--whether to try
electrification: a score of pleasant riddles that made the hours fly. And
now this old fever had crept again into her blood, and everything had
lost its savour. There were times when she bitterly, childishly,
regretted it. She could almost have hated Ellesborough, because she loved
him so well; and because of the terror, the ceaseless preoccupation that
her love had begun to impose upon her.

Janet, watching her come in, saw that t