on the stone of sacrifice.

When I had done Lily thanked me for my honesty and said it seemed that
in such matters men differed from women, seeing that SHE had never felt
the need to be delivered from the temptation of strange loves. Still we
were as God and Nature had made us, and therefore had little right to
reproach each other, or even to set that down as virtue which was
but lack of leaning. Moreover, this Otomie, her sin of heathenism
notwithstanding, had been a great-hearted woman and one who might well
dazzle the wandering eyes of man, daring more for her love's sake than
ever she, Lily, could have dared; and to end with, it was clear that at
last I must choose between wedding her and a speedy death, and having
sworn so great an oath to her I should have been perjured indeed if
I had left her when my dangers were gone by. Therefore she, Lily, was
minded to let all this matter rest, nor should she be jealous if I still
thought of this dead wife of mine with tenderness.

Thus she spoke most sweetly, looking at me the while with her clear
and earnest eyes, that I ever fancied must be such as adorn the shining
faces of angels. Ay, and those same eyes of hers were filled with tears
when I told her my bitter grief over the death of my firstborn and of my
other bereavements. For it was not till some years afterwards, when she
had abandoned further hope of children, that Lily grew jealous of those
dead sons of mine and of my ever present love for them.

Now the tidings of my return and of my strange adventures among the
nations of the Indies were noised abroad far and wide, and people came
from miles round, ay, even from Norwich and Yarmouth, to see me and I
was pressed to tell my tale till I grew weary of it. Also a service of
thanksgiving for my safe deliverance from many dangers by land and sea
was held in the church of St. Mary's here in Ditchingham, which service
was no longer celebrated after the rites of the Romish faith, for while
I had sojourned afar, the saints were fallen like the Aztec gods; the
yoke of Rome had been broken from off the neck of England, and though
all do not think with me, I for one rejoiced at it heartily who had seen
enough of priestcraft and its cruelties.

When that ceremony was over and all people had gone to their homes, I
came back again to the empty church from the Hall, where I abode a while
as the guest of my sister and her husband, till Lily and I were wed.

And there in th