ing he was not followed stopped, and looked back.

She was lying on her face, with her hands spread out.

Yes, without meaning it, he had thrown her down and hurt her.

When he saw that, he groaned and turned back a step; but suddenly, by
another impulse flung himself into the icy water instead.

"There, kill my body!" he cried, "but save my soul!"

Whilst he stood there, up to his throat in liquid ice, so to speak,
Margaret uttered one long, piteous moan, and rose to her knees.

He saw her as plain almost as in midday. Saw her pale face and her eyes
glistening; and then in the still night he heard these words:

"Oh, God! Thou that knowest all, Thou seest how I am used. Forgive me
then! For I will not live another day." With this she suddenly started
to her feet, and flew like some wild creature, wounded to death,
close by his miserable hiding-place, shrieking:

"CRUEL!--CRUEL!--CRUEL!--CRUEL!"

What manifold anguish may burst from a human heart in a single syllable.
There were wounded love, and wounded pride, and despair, and coming
madness all in that piteous cry. Clement heard, and it froze his heart
with terror and remorse, worse than the icy water chilled the marrow of
his bones.

He felt he had driven her from him for ever, and in the midst of
his dismal triumph, the greatest he had won, there came an almost
incontrollable impulse to curse the Church, to curse religion itself,
for exacting such savage cruelty from mortal man. At last he crawled
half dead out of the water, and staggered to his den. "I am safe here,"
he groaned; "she will never come near me again; unmanly, ungrateful
wretch that I am." And he flung his emaciated, frozen body down on the
floor, not without a secret hope that it might never rise thence alive.

But presently he saw by the hour-glass that it was past midnight.

On this, he rose slowly and took off his wet things, and moaning all
the time at the pain he had caused her he loved, put on the old hermit's
cilice of bristles, and over that his breastplate. He had never worn
either of these before, doubting himself worthy to don the arms of that
tried soldier. But now he must give himself every aid; the bristles
might distract his earthly remorse by bodily pain, and there might be
holy virtue in the breastplate. Then he kneeled down and prayed God
humbly to release him that very night from the burden of the flesh. Then
he lighted all his candles, and recited his psalter doggedly; e