ourage its return. It was necessary for him
to fix the present status of the woman whom he had once called his wife.
He could reason from that point logically. She had never been his wife
except by the forms of law. Her treason had begun with his love, and her
uncleanness was part of her nature; so much had he learned on that
fearful night which revealed her to him. His wealth and his name were
the prizes which made her traitor to lover and husband. What folly is
there in man, or what enchantment in beauty, or what madness in love,
that he could have taken to his arms the thing that hated him and hated
goodness? Should not love, the best of God's gifts, be wisdom too? Or do
men ever really love the object of passion?

Oh, he had loved her! Not a doubt but that he loved her still! Sonia,
Sonia! The pool wrinkled at the sound of her name, as he shrieked it in
anguish across the water. There was nothing in the world so beautiful as
she. Her figure rose before him more entrancing than this fairy lake
with its ever-changing loveliness. Its shadows under the trees were in
her eyes, its luster under the sun was the luster of her body! Oh, there
was nothing of beauty in it, perfume, grace, color, its singing and
murmuring on the shore, that this perfect sinner had not in her body!

He steadied himself with the thought of old Martha. A dread caught him
that the image of this foul beauty would haunt him thus forever, and be
able at any time to drive joy out of him and madness into him. Some part
of him clung to her, and wove a thousand fancies about her beauty. When
the pain of his desolation gripped him the result was invariable: she
rose out of the mist of pain, not like a fury, or the harpy she was, but
beautiful as the morning, far above him, with glorious eyes fixed on the
heavens. He thought it rather the vision of his lost happiness than of
her. If she were present then, he would have held her under the water
with his hands squeezing her throat, and so doubly killed her. But what
a terror if this vision were to become permanent, and he should never
know ease or the joy of living again! And for a thing so worthless and
so foul!

He steadied himself again with the thought of old Martha, and fixed his
mind on the first fact, the starting-point of his reasoning. She had
never been his wife. Her own lips had uttered that sentence. The law had
bound them, and the law protected her now. But she enjoyed a stronger
guard even: hi