r conduct. She condemned herself
utterly. She had come to that place of the dead absolutely resolved to
ask forgiveness of Dion. And yet now that she saw his body the sense of
personal outrage woke in her, gripped her. She grew hot, she tingled. A
fierce jealousy of the flesh tormented her. And suddenly she was afraid
of herself. Was her body then more powerful than her soul? Was she,
who had always cared for the things of the soul hopelessly physical? It
seemed to her that even now she might succumb to what she supposed was
an overwhelming personal pride, that even now she might be unable to do
what she had come all the long way from England to do. But she forced
herself to go onward up the path. She looked down; she would not see
that body of a man which had belonged to her and to which she had
belonged; but she made herself go towards it.

Presently she felt that she was drawing near to it; then that she was
close to it. Then she stopped. Standing still for a moment she prayed.
She prayed that she might be able in this supreme crisis of her life to
govern the baser part of herself, that she might be allowed, might be
helped, to rise to those heights of which Father Robertson had spoken
to her, that she might at last realize the finest possibilities of her
nature, that she might be able to do the most difficult thing, to be
humble, to forget any injury which had been inflicted upon herself, and
to remember only the tremendous injury she had inflicted upon another.
When her prayer was finished she did not know whether it had been
heard, whether, if it had been heard, it had been accepted and would be
granted. She did not know at all what she would be able to do. But she
looked up and saw Dion. He was close to her, was standing just in front
of her, with one arm holding the cypress trunk, trembling slightly and
gazing at her, gazing at her with eyes that were terrible because they
revealed so much of agony, of love and of terror. She looked into those
eyes, she looked at the frightful change written on the face that had
once been so familiar to her, and suddenly an immense pity inundated
her. It seemed to her that she endured in that moment all the suffering
which Dion had endured since the tragedy at Welsley added to her own
suffering. She stood there for a moment looking at him. Then she said
only:

"Forgive me, oh, forgive me!"

Tears rushed into her eyes. She had been able to say it. It had not been
difficult to