As for Tyson, he had not a doubt on the subject.  One morning he was sitting in her room, watching her with a feverish, intermittent devotion.  He noticed her right arm as it hung along the counterpane, and the droop of the beautiful right hand—­the one beautiful thing about her now.  He remembered how he used to tease her about that little white spot on her wrist, and how she used to laugh and shake down her ruffles or her bangles to hide it.  Even now she had the old trick; she had drawn the sleeve of her night-gown over it, as she felt his gaze resting on it.  Strange—­though she was still sensitive about that tiny blemish, she was apparently indifferent to the change in her face.  He wondered if she realized how irreparably her beauty was destroyed, and as he wondered he looked away, lest his eyes should wake that consciousness in her.  He had no idea how long they had been alone together.  Time was not measured by words, for neither had spoken much.  He had taken Henley’s “Verses” at haphazard from the bookshelf and was turning over the pages, dipping here and there, in the fastidious fashion of a man in no mind for any ideas but his own.  Presently he broke out in a voice that throbbed thickly with emotion—­

“Out of the night that covers me,
   Black as the pit from pole to pole,
 I thank whatever gods may be
   For my unconquerable soul—­”

He had found the music that matched his mood.  He chanted—­

“It matters not how strait the gate,
   How charged with punishments the scroll,
 I am the master of my fate;
   I am the captain of my soul.”

Some clumsy movement of his foot shook the bed and jarred her.  She drew in her breath sharply.

“God forgive me!” he cried, “did I hurt you, darling?”

“I don’t mind.  It’s worth it,” said she.

At her look his sins rose up to his remembrance.  He flung himself on his knees beside the bed, shaken with his passion of remorse.  He muttered a wild, inarticulate confession.

“Don’t, Nevill, don’t,” she whispered; “it made no difference.  It’s all over and done with now.”

He looked at her body and thought of the beauty of her soul.  He broke into vows and promises.

“Yes; it’s all over.  I swear I’ll never look at another woman as long as I live.”

The pressure of her weak arms round his neck thrilled him with an exquisite tenderness, a voluptuous pity.  Surely, surely in his heart of hearts he had never loved any woman as he loved her.  She comforted him; she whispered things too sacred for perfect utterance.  It struck him from time to time that she had no clear notion of the nature of the wrongs she forgave, just as by some miracle her mind had dwelt apart from everything that was base in her own marriage.  Her ideas of evil were vague and bodiless.  She may have conceived Nevill to have been the victim of some malign intellectual influence, the thrall, perhaps, of some Miss Batchelor sans merci.  There may have been mysteries, gulfs before which she shuddered, dim regions which she could only just divine.  He did not know that with women like his wife there is all infinity between what they realize and what they fear.  Yet within its range of vision her love was terribly clearsighted.  And now, one by one, Tyson’s sins fell from him in the purifying fire of his wife’s fancy.