It took but one interview after he had confessed it to himself, to reveal the fact to her that she had grown a burden to him.  He came a little seldomer, and by degrees which seemed to her terribly rapid, more and more seldom.  He had never recognized duty in his relation to her.  I do not mean that he had not done the effects of duty toward her; love had as yet prevented the necessity of appeal to the stern daughter of God.  But what love with which our humanity is acquainted can keep healthy without calling in the aid of Duty?  Perfect Love is the mother of all duties and all virtues, and needs not be admonished of her children; but not until Love is perfected, may she, casting out Fear, forget also Duty.  And hence are the conditions of such a relation altogether incongruous.  For the moment the man, not yet debased, admits a thought of duty, he is aware that far more is demanded of him than, even for the sake of purest right, he has either the courage or the conscience to yield.  But even now Faber had not the most distant intention of forsaking her; only why should he let her burden him, and make his life miserable?  There were other pleasures besides the company of the most childishly devoted of women:  why should he not take them?  Why should he give all his leisure to one who gave more than the half of it to her baby?

He had money of his own, and, never extravagant upon himself, was more liberal to the poor girl than ever she desired.  But there was nothing mercenary in her.  She was far more incapable of turpitude than he, for she was of a higher nature, and loved much where he loved only a little.  She was nobler, sweetly prouder than he.  She had sacrificed all to him for love—­could accept nothing from him without the love which alone is the soul of any gift, alone makes it rich.  She would not, could not see him unhappy.  In her fine generosity, struggling to be strong, she said to herself, that, after all, she would leave him richer than she was before—­richer than he was now.  He would not want the child he had given her; she would, and she could, live for her, upon the memory of two years of such love as, comforting herself in sad womanly pride, she flattered herself woman had seldom enjoyed.  She would not throw the past from her because the weather of time had changed; she would not mar every fair memory with the inky sponge of her present loss.  She would turn her back upon her sun ere he set quite, and carry with her into the darkness the last gorgeous glow of his departure.  While she had his child, should she never see him again, there remained a bond between them—­a bond that could never be broken.  He and she met in that child’s life—­her being was the eternal fact of their unity.

Both she and he had to learn that there was yet a closer bond between them, necessary indeed to the fact that a child could be born of them, namely, that they two had issued from the one perfect Heart of love.  And every heart of perplexed man, although, too much for itself, it can not conceive how the thing should be, has to learn that there, in that heart whence it came, lies for it restoration, consolation, content.  Herein, O God, lies a task for Thy perfection, for the might of Thy imagination—­which needs but Thy will (and Thy suffering?) to be creation!