roof against
him."

"Yes."

Another silence.

"I am glad you have thrown him over," said the Bishop, slowly, "for you
never loved him."

"I deceived myself in that case," said Rachel, bitterly. "My only fear
was that I loved him too much."

The Bishop's face had become fixed and stern.

"Listen to me, Rachel," he said. "You fell desperately in love with an
inferior man. He is charming, refined, well-bred, and with a picturesque
mind, but that is all. He is inferior. He is by nature shallow and hard
(the two generally go together), without moral backbone, the kind of man
who never faces a difficulty, who always flinches when it comes to the
point, the stuff out of which liars and cowards are made. His one
redeeming quality is his love for you. I have seen men in love before. I
have never seen a man care more for a woman than he cares for you. His
love for you has taken entire possession of him, and by it he will sink
or swim."

The Bishop paused. Rachel's face worked.

"He deceived you," said the Bishop, "not because he wished to deceive
you, but because he was in a horrible position, and because his first
impulse of love was to keep you at any price. But his love for you was
raising him even while he deceived you. Did he spend sleepless nights
because for months he vilely deceived Lord Newhaven? No. Rectitude was
not in him. His conscience was not awake. But I tell you, Rachel, he has
suffered like a man on the rack from deceiving you. I knew by his face
as soon as I saw him that he was undergoing some great mental strain. I
did not understand it, but I do now."

Rachel's mind, always slow, moved, stumbled to its bleeding feet.

"It was remorse," she said, turning her face away.

"It was not remorse. It was repentance. Remorse is bitter. Repentance is
humble. His love for you has led him to it. Not your love for him,
Rachel, which breaks down at the critical moment; his love for you which
has brought him for the first time to the perception of the higher life,
to the need of God's forgiveness, which I know from things he has said,
has made him long to lead a better life, one worthier of you."

"Don't," said Rachel. "I can't bear it."

The Bishop rose, and stood facing her.

"And at last," he went on--"at last, in a moment, when you showed your
full trust and confidence in him, he shook off for an instant the clogs
of the nature which he brought into the world, and rose to what he had
never been before