.
Bennydeck brought it to her, and placed it on the table near which she
was sitting. He turned to the New Testament, and opened it at the Gospel
of Saint Matthew. With his hand on the page, he said:

"I have done my best rightly to understand the duties of a Christian.
One of those duties, as I interpret them, is to let what I believe show
itself in what I do. You have seen enough of me, I hope, to know (though
I have not been forward in speaking of it) that I am, to the best of my
poor ability, a faithful follower of the teachings of Christ. I dare not
set my own interests and my own happiness above His laws. If I suffer in
obeying them as I suffer now, I must still submit. They are the laws of
my life."

"Is it through me that you suffer?"

"It is through you."

"Will you tell me how?"

He had already found the chapter. His tears dropped on it as he pointed
to the verse.

"Read," he answered, "what the most compassionate of all Teachers has
said, in the Sermon on the Mount."

She read: "Whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth
adultery."

Another innocent woman, in her place, might have pointed to that first
part of the verse, which pre-supposes the infidelity of the divorced
wife, and might have asked if those words applied to _her_. This woman,
knowing that she had lost him, knew also what she owed to herself. She
rose in silence, and held out her hand at parting.

He paused before he took her hand. "Can you forgive me?" he asked.

She said: "I can pity you."

"Can you look back to the day of your marriage? Can you remember the
words which declared the union between you and your husband to be
separable only by death? Has he treated you with brutal cruelty?"

"Never!"

"Has he repented of his sin?"

"Yes."

"Ask your own conscience if there is not a worthier life for you and
your child than the life that you are leading now." He waited, after
that appeal to her. The silence remained unbroken. "Do not mistake me,"
he resumed gently. "I am not thinking of the calamity that has fallen on
me in a spirit of selfish despair--I am looking to _your_ future, and I
am trying to show you the way which leads to hope. Catherine! have you
no word more to say to me?"

In faint trembling tones she answered him at last:

"You have left me but one word to say. Farewell!"

He drew her to him gently, and kissed her on the forehead. The agony
in his face was more than she could support; she recoiled