cept by death, we must not any way
Forget our lady who is gone from us."

CHAPTER XXVII

ISABEL CALLING

If women were thus henceforth to influence Theophil, why might not
Isabel, the woman whom Jenny had loved, be counted amongst them?

Isabel was the one woman in the whole world whom Theophil's faithfulness
could not transform into Jenny. That it had been his fatal love for her
that had brought Jenny to her death, his reason, except in moments of
self-injustice, was robust enough to put aside.

There are excuses that we owe to ourselves, and we have a right to
expect justice even from our own consciences. A sentimental conscience
is the most tiresome of all altruists, and wilfully to indulge in
remorse that we have not justly incurred is to blunt our consciences
for real offences. The best repentance for our sins is a clear-eyed
recognition of their nature, and the temptation in some flurry of
feeling to take on our shoulders the mistakes of destiny with which we
chance to have been involuntarily associated, is one to be resisted in
the interests of that self-knowledge which is the beginning of
self-development. Before we take the scourge in hand for our own
shoulders let us be quite sure that we have sinned.

There were hours, particularly those hours of sudden wakefulness in the
middle of the night when our minds lose their sense of proportion, in
which Theophil agonised beyond endurance, and, as on that afternoon when
he had found Jenny's diary, said to himself with merciless reiteration,
"She seems to have had a shock"--"It was you who killed Jenny."

These hours had to be supported as we support hours of purely physical
pain. The morning brought a saner, larger view. The tragedy of Jenny's
death was not to be so easily explained. In it were implicated more
august responsible causes, it was part of a more general tragedy; as the
original instinct to blame himself and Isabel was part of man's ancient
theological habit of making man the scapegoat of the universe.

But as the thought of Isabel thus became bearable once more, it became
for that very reason a thought the more faithfully to be resisted.

It might become sweet.

It was sweet!

One day the casuistry of grief brought Theophil the reflection that, as
Isabel was the only woman he knew whom Jenny had known too, and that as
Jenny had loved her also, she was thus destined for him even by Jenny
herself. Besides, as he had realised no un