“Christian,” he began again, with an effort, “I want to say something to you.  Once in my life, when I was almost as young as you are, I made a great mistake.  Therefore I know that mistakes are not irretrievable.  God teaches us sometimes by our very errors, leading us through them into light and truth.  Only we must follow Him, and hold fast to the right, however difficult it may be.  We must not be disheartened:  we must leave the past where it is, and go on to the future; do what we have to do, and suffer all we have to suffer.  We must meet things as they are, without perplexing ourselves about what they might have been; for, if we believe in an overruling Providence at all, there can be no such possibility as ‘might have been.’”

“That is true,” said Christian, musingly.  She had never known Dr. Grey to speak like this.  She wondered a little why he should do it now; and yet his words struck home.  That great “mistake”—­was it his first marriage? which, perhaps, had not been a happy one.  At least, he never spoke of it, or of his children’s mother.  And besides, it was difficult to believe that any man could have loved two women, as, Christian knew and felt, Dr. Grey now loved herself.

But she asked hint no questions; she felt not the slightest curiosity about that, or about any thing.  She was like a person in a state of moral catalepsy, to whom, for the time being, every feeling, pleasant or painful, seems dulled and dead.

Dr. Grey said no more, and what he had said was evidently with great effort.  He appeared glad to go back into ordinary talk, showing her what he had done in the room to make it pretty and pleasant for his bride, and smiling over her childish delight to see again her maiden treasures, with which she had parted so mournfully.

“You could not think I meant you really to part with them, Christian?” said he.  “I fancied you had found out my harmless deceit long ago.  But you are such an innocent baby, my child—­as clear as crystal, and as true as steel.”

“Oh no, no!” she cried, as he went out of the room—­a cry that was almost a sob, and might have called him back again—­but he was gone, and the moment had passed by.  With it passed the slight quivering and softening which had been visible in her face, and she sunk again into the impassive calm which made Christian Grey so totally different, from Christian Oakley.

She rose up, took off her bonnet and shawl, and arranged her hair, looking into the mirror with eyes that evidently saw nothing.  Then she knelt before the fire, warming her ice-cold hands on which the two-weeks’ familiar ring seemed to shine with a fatal glitter.  She kept moving it up and down with a nervous habit that she was trying vainly to conquer.

“A mistake,” she muttered, “Perhaps my marriage, too, was a mistake, irretrievable, irremediable, as he may himself think now, only he was too kind to let me see it.  What am I to do?  Nothing.  I can do nothing.  ‘Until death us do part.’  Do I wish for death—­my death, of course—­to come and part us?”