He spoke no word.  She spoke again.  Despair gave her both insight and utterance—­despair and great love, and the truth of God that underlies even despair.

“You pressed me to marry you,” she said:  “what was I to do?  How could I tell you?  And I loved you so!  I persuaded myself I was safe with you—­you were so generous.  You would protect me from every thing, even my own past.  In your name I sent it away, and would not think of it again.  I said to myself you would not wish me to tell you the evil that had befallen me.  I persuaded myself you loved me enough even for that.  I held my peace trusting you.  Oh my husband! my Paul! my heart is crushed.  The dreadful thing has come back.  I thought it was gone from me, and now it will not leave me any more.  I am a horror to myself.  There is no one to punish and forgive me but you.  Forgive me, my husband.  You are the God to whom I pray.  If you pardon me I shall be content even with myself.  I shall seek no other pardon; your favor is all I care for.  If you take me for clean, I am clean for all the world.  You can make me clean—­you only.  Do it, Paul; do it, husband.  Make me clean that I may look women in the face.  Do, Paul, take the whip and strike me.  I long for my deserts at your hand.  Do comfort me.  I am waiting the sting of it, Paul, to know that you have forgiven me.  If I should cry out, it will be for gladness.—­Oh, my husband,”—­here her voice rose to an agony of entreaty—­“I was but a girl—­hardly more than a child in knowledge—­I did not know what I was doing.  He was much older than I was, and I trusted him!—­O my God!  I hardly know what I knew and what I did not know:  it was only when it was too late that I woke and understood.  I hate myself.  I scorn myself.  But am I to be wretched forever because of that one fault, Paul?  Will you not be my saviour and forgive me my sin?  Oh, do not drive me mad.  I am only clinging to my reason.  Whip me and I shall be well.  Take me again, Paul.  I will not, if you like, even fancy myself your wife any more.  I will be your slave.  You shall do with me whatever you will.  I will obey you to the very letter.  Oh beat me and let me go.”

She sunk prone on the floor, and clasped and kissed his feet.

He took the whip from her hand.

Of course a man can not strike a woman!  He may tread her in the mire; he may clasp her and then scorn her; he may kiss her close, and then dash her from him into a dung-heap, but he must not strike her—­that would be unmanly!  Oh! grace itself is the rage of the pitiful Othello to the forbearance of many a self-contained, cold-blooded, self-careful slave, that thinks himself a gentleman!  Had not Faber been even then full of his own precious self, had he yielded to her prayer or to his own wrath, how many hours of agony would have been saved them both!—­“What! would you have had him really strike her?” I would have had him do any thing rather than