lay my face down against yours, and out of very pure
hate will kiss you once. Even in the death-agony I mean you to know my
fingers in your hair.'

The wretched soul writhed as the hideous words rose up against her to
damn. They were alive with every tone and laugh; they would live stinging
and eating out her heart until she died.

And after death?

'Christian! Christian!'

The agonised cry now was no effort to waken deaf ears; it called after
Christian himself, gone past reach of her remorse into unknown night.
Gone deliberately, to be finally quit of so abhorred a creature? In mute
witness the quiet body lay to vindicate Christian: too broken it was, too
darkly grey for any death self-willed.

Then she could look upon the blank face no more, for the moon passed
quite away. Then the stretching tide came lapping and fawning, soon to
sway the dead weight she held. She was not worthy to look upon clay so
sacred, she was not worthy to touch it, she who in wanton moods had
inclined to a splendid male, nor recognised in him a nobler version of
love. No spark of profane passion could remain after she had kissed the
cold, dead face.

The dreadful cry of a soul's despair broke the vacant air with the name
of Christian. Many times his name, and no other word. The desolation of
great agony was hers: no creature of the sea could bring her any comfort
now; no creature under heaven; for the one on earth to whom her child's
heart yearned was the one on earth she least dared face with her awful
load of guilt.

Nothing could atone for what she had done: life could never give scope,
nor death. Were this that she held Christian himself, able to see and
hear, her passionate remorse could conceive no dearer impossibility than
at his feet to fall, with supplication, with absolute confession
delivering the love and worship of her heart before him: to be spurned by
his inevitable hate. The inexorable indifference of the dead was a
juster, a more terrible, recompense.

Yet a more terrible conception woke from a growing discernment of
Christian's utter abstraction from the mortal shape, that so long had
represented him to her, and so well. This his body had ceased from
suffering and endurance, yet the very self of Christian might bear with
him unassuaged the wounds and aches her malice had compassed. Hate would
heal, would sear, at least; but oh! if he had not quit him of a tyrannous
love, then bruised and bleeding he carried with him