With the tenderest smile he sought to reassure her, and would have gently released himself from the agonized clasp of her arms about his neck, that he might get her something.  But she tightened her hold.

“Don’t leave me, Paul,” she cried.  “I was dreaming, but I am wide awake now, and know only too well what I have done.”

“Dreams are nothing.  The will is not in them,” he said.  But the thought of his sweet wife even dreaming a thing to be repented of in such dismay, tore his heart.  For he was one of the many—­not all of the purest—­who cherish an ideal of woman which, although indeed poverty-stricken and crude, is to their minds of snowy favor, to their judgment of loftiest excellence.  I trust in God that many a woman, despite the mud of doleful circumstance, yea, even the defilement that comes first from within, has risen to a radiance of essential innocence ineffably beyond that whose form stood white in Faber’s imagination.  For I see and understand a little how God, giving righteousness, makes pure of sin, and that verily—­by no theological quibble of imputation, by no play with words, by no shutting of the eyes, no oblivion, willful or irresistible, but by very fact of cleansing, so that the consciousness of the sinner becomes glistering as the raiment of the Lord on the mount of His transfiguration.  I do not expect the Pharisee who calls the sinner evil names, and drags her up to judgment, to comprehend this; but, woman, cry to thy Father in Heaven, for He can make thee white, even to the contentment of that womanhood which thou hast thyself outraged.

Faber unconsciously prided himself on the severity of his requirements of woman, and saw his own image reflected in the polish of his ideal; and now a fear whose presence he would not acknowledge began to gnaw at his heart, a vague suggestion’s horrid image, to which he would yield no space, to flit about his brain.

“Would to God it were a dream, Paul!” answered the stricken wife.

“You foolish child!” returned the nigh trembling husband, “how can you expect me to believe, married but yesterday, you have already got tired of me!”

“Tired of you, Paul!  I should desire no other eternal paradise than to lie thus under your eyes forever.”

“Then for my sake, my darling wife, send away this extravagance, this folly, this absurd fancy that has got such a hold of you.  It will turn to something serious if you do not resist it.  There can be no truth in it, and I am certain that one with any strength of character can do much at least to prevent the deeper rooting of a fixed idea.”  But as he spoke thus to her, in his own soul he was as one fighting the demons off with a fan.  “Tell me what the mighty matter is,” he went on, “that I may swear to you I love you the more for the worst weakness you have to confess.”

“Ah, my love!” returned Juliet, “how like you are now to the Paul I have dreamed of so often!  But you will not be able to forgive me.  I have read somewhere that men never forgive—­that their honor is before their wives with them.  Paul! if you should not be able to forgive me, you must help me to die, and not be cruel to me.”