the mauve stocking, and the little shoe set
firmly. The ear is as a rose leaf, a fluff of light hair trembles on the
curving nape, and the head is crowned with thick brown gold. "O to bathe
my face in those perfumed waves! O to kiss with a deep kiss the hollow
of that cool neck!..." The thought came he know not whence nor how, as
lightning falls from a clear sky, as desert horsemen come with a glitter
of spears out of the cloud; there is a shock, a passing anguish, and
they are gone.

He left her. So frightened was he at this sudden and singular obsession
of his spiritual nature by a lower and grosser nature, whose existence
in himself was till now unsuspected, and of whose life and wants in
others he had felt, and still felt, so much scorn, that in the tumult of
his loathing he could not gain the calm of mind necessary for an
examination of conscience. He could not look into his mind with any
present hope of obtaining a truthful reply to the very eminent and vital
question, how far his will had participated in that burning but wholly
inexcusable desire by which he had been so shockingly assailed.

That inner life, so strangely personal and pure, and of which he was so
proud, seemed to him now to be befouled, and all its mystery and inner
grace, and the perfect possession which was his sanctuary, lost to him
for ever. For he could never quite forget the defiling thought; it would
always remain with him, and the consciousness of the stain would
preclude all possibility of that refining happiness, that attribute of
cleanliness, which he now knew had long been his. In his anger and
self-loathing his rage turned against Kitty. It was always the same
story--the charm and ideality of man's life always soiled by woman's
influence; so it was in the beginning, so it shall be....

He stopped before the injustice of the accusation; he remembered her
candour and her gracious innocence, and he was sorry; and he remembered
her youth and her beauty, and he let his thoughts dwell upon her.
Turning over his papers he came across the old monk's song to David:

"Surge meo domno dulces fac, fistula versus:
David amat versus, surge fac fistula versus,
David amat vates vatorum est gloria David...."

The verses seemed meaningless and tame, but they awoke vague impulses in
him, and, his mind filled by a dim dream of King David and Bathsheba, he
opened his Bible and turned over the pages, reading a phrase here and
there until h