she realised that the justification she attempted was for her own soul rather than for her lover; and she saw that whether Kemper suspected or not made no vital difference to her so long as the dishonesty was there.  “The unspoken lie is still between us and his knowledge of it can neither take it away nor undo the fact that it has been.  And if I burned the letter might I not be guilty of even greater things under the same impulse?  Since I trust neither him nor myself what is there but misery in any future that we may share?  Shall I give him up even now?  Can I give him up?” But as she demanded this of herself there returned to her the look in his eyes at certain animated instants, and she felt that the charm of his look, which meant nothing, was stronger to hold her than a multitude of reasons.  “If I could forget this look in his face, I might forget him,” she thought, “but though I struggle to forget it I cannot any more than I can forget the letter lying on his desk.”

Again she closed her eyes in a fresh effort to shut out consciousness; but when she determined to sleep the darkness seemed to grow suddenly alive about her, and starting up in a spasm of terror, she lighted the candle on the table beside her bed.

“In the morning I shall tell him,” she exclaimed aloud, “I shall tell him everything and if he looks at me with anger I shall go away and not see him any more.”  At the time it appeared to her very easy, and she felt that it made no difference to her however things might happen on the morrow.  “It will be as it will be, and I cannot alter it, for in any event I shall be miserable whether I marry him or give him up.”  Then she remembered that though she had pardoned Kemper greater sins than this, by the courage of his attitude he had always succeeded in placing her hopelessly in the wrong.  “Even after his meeting with Madame Alta it was he who forgave me,” she thought with the strange mental clearness, which destroyed her happiness without lessening her emotion, “and through his whole life, however deeply he may wrong me, I know that I shall always be the one to justify myself and seek forgiveness.  Is it, after all, only necessary to have the courage of one’s acts that one may do anything and not be punished?”

The light of the candle flickering on the mirror gave back her own face to her as if reflected in the dim surface of a pool.  She watched the shadows from a vase, of autumn leaves come and go across it, until it seemed to her that the rippling reflection resembled a drowned face that was still her own; and shrinking back in horror, she sat holding the candle in her hand, so that the light would shine on the walls and floor.