Slowly, with benumbed fingers and trembling hands, she dressed herself:  that bed she would lie in no more, for she had wronged her husband.  Whether before or after he was her husband, mattered nothing.  To have ever called him husband was the wrong.  She had seemed that she was not, else he would never have loved or sought her; she had outraged his dignity, defiled him; he had cast her off, and she could not, would not blame him.  Happily for her endurance of her misery, she did not turn upon her idol and cast him from his pedestal; she did not fix her gaze upon his failure instead of her own; she did not espy the contemptible in his conduct, and revolt from her allegiance.

But was such a man then altogether the ideal of a woman’s soul?  Was he a fit champion of humanity who would aid only within the limits of his pride? who, when a despairing creature cried in soul-agony for help, thought first and only of his own honor?  The notion men call their honor is the shadow of righteousness, the shape that is where the light is not, the devil that dresses as nearly in angel-fashion as he can, but is none the less for that a sneak and a coward.

She put on her cloak and bonnet:  the house was his, not hers.  He and she had never been one:  she must go and meet her fate.  There was one power, at least, the key to the great door of liberty, which the weakest as well as the strongest possessed:  she could die.  Ah, how welcome would Death be now!  Did he ever know or heed the right time to come, without being sent for—­without being compelled?  In the meantime her only anxiety was to get out of the house:  away from Paul she would understand more precisely what she had to do.  With the feeling of his angry presence, she could not think.  Yet how she loved him—­strong in his virtue and indignation!  She had not yet begun to pity herself, or to allow to her heart that he was hard upon her.

She was leaving the room when a glitter on her hand caught her eye:  the old diamond disk, which he had bought of her in her trouble, and restored to her on her wedding-day, was answering the herald of the sunrise.  She drew it off:  he must have it again.  With it she drew off also her wedding-ring.  Together she laid them on the dressing table, turned again, and with noiseless foot and desert heart went through the house, opened the door, and stole into the street.  A thin mist was waiting for her.  A lean cat, gray as the mist, stood on the steps of the door opposite.  No other living thing was to be seen.  The air was chill.  The autumn rains were at hand.  But her heart was the only desolation.

Already she knew where she was going.  In the street she turned to the left.