He had no headache; his previous habits had been too regular, his blood was too pure, and the brandy was too good for that.  He was simply bewildered, but utterly bewildered, as though he had waked up in another world.

He was conscious of a weight upon his heart, but could not remember the cause of it; and whether it was grief or remorse, or both, he could not tell.  He feared that it was both.

Gradually memory and misery returned to him; the dreadful day; the marriage; the feast; the parting; the lawsuit; the two glasses of brandy, and their mortifying consequences.  All the events of that day lay clearly before him now—­that horrible day begun in unutterable sorrow, and ended in humiliating sin!

Was it himself, Ishmael Worth, who had suffered this sorrow, yielded to this temptation, and fallen into this sin?  To what had his inordinate earthly affections brought him?  He was no longer “the chevalier without fear and without reproach.”  He had fallen, fallen, fallen!

He remembered that when he had sunk to sleep the sun was shining and smiling all over the beautiful garden, and that even in his half-drowsy state he had noticed its glory.  The sun was gone now.  It had set upon his humiliating weakness.  The day had given up the record of his sin and passed away forever.  The day would return no more to reproach him, but its record would meet him in the judgment.

He remembered that once in his deep sleep he had half awakened and found what seemed a weeping angel bending over him, and that he had tried to rouse himself to speak; but in the effort he had only turned over and tumbled into a deeper oblivion than ever.

Who was that pitying angel visitant?

The answer came like a shock of electricity.  It was Bee!  Who else should it have been?  It was Bee!  She had sought him out when he was lost; she had found him in his weakness; she had dropped tears of love and sorrow over him.

At that thought new shame, new grief, new remorse swept in upon his soul.

He sprang upon his feet, and in doing so dropped a little white drift upon the ground.  He stooped and picked it up.

It was the fine white handkerchief that on first waking up he had plucked from his face.  And he knew by its soft thin feeling and its delicate scent of violets, Bee’s favorite perfume, that it was her handkerchief, and she had spread it as a veil over his exposed and feverish, face.  That little wisp of cambric was redolent of Bee! of her presence, her purity, her tenderness.

It seemed a mere trifle; but it touched the deepest springs of his heart, and, holding it in both his hands, he bowed his humbled head upon it and wept.

When a man like Ishmael weeps it is no gentle summer shower, I assure you; but as the breaking up of great fountains, the rushing of mighty torrents, the coming of a flood.

He wept long and convulsively.  And his deluge of tears relieved his surcharged heart and brain and did him good.  He breathed more freely; he wiped his face with this dear handkerchief, and then, all dripping wet with tears as it was, he pressed it to his lips and placed it in his bosom, over his heart, and registered a solemn vow in Heaven that this first fault of his life should also, with God’s help, be his last.