Our sudden halt had worked swiftly on Gabriel also.  He set to work; the restlessness died out of him, but, alas! the lightness, too.  He became very still, silent and self-absorbed.  In the cool of evening, the time of day when I was strongest, I used to turn my kind little nun out of the room, and then Gabriel came and read to me.

At first he had tried to finish the long poem begun in the days of our betrothal, but he soon laid that aside, and another sprang forward with extraordinary rapidity.  Perhaps he himself was hardly aware of the sorrow of that poem; perhaps he thought I would judge it so entirely as a work of art that I should not take note of its deep gloom, of its hopeless melancholy.  But nothing was lost upon me now.  I read it in every line,—­he suffered; something failed him,—­perhaps he knew not what, perhaps he knew.  A terrible loneliness was in his heart,—­and I had given him all I had to give.

On the fifteenth of July, I awoke with a sense of something fresh and sweet; a bunch of roses lay upon my pillow, and Gabriel stood beside my bed.  The shutters were still closed.

“What?” said I, “have you been out already?  How dear of you this is!  Is the sun shining?”

And he answered: 

“Of course, what should it do but shine on our wedding-day?”

Then he sat down on the edge of the bed, and took both my hands in his.

“Emilia,” said he, “you have made me very happy.”

But I, sitting up, bent my head low over his hands and kissed them; my loose hair fell forward, he did not see the tears that stood in my eyes.  I knew that he had lied.

From that day I began to think with a purpose.  I had already gained sufficient mastery over myself, sufficient calm and strength of spirit to be able to do so.

I can hardly call it a struggle that followed.  I copied out and laid under my pillow the words of the covenant we had made the day after our betrothal; daily I read it through, and recognised how we had failed towards each other, and towards our best beliefs.

We had both failed; but, whereas he had erred merely, I knew that I had sinned; in the fulness of my remorse, my only thought was now to offer reparation.  Nor was it only for Gabriel’s sake that I was now possessed by the desire of atonement.  In the blindness of human passion, I had sinned against my better self, my noblest purposes, my most firm and high beliefs; that passion conquered, I determined to make amends for my great transgression by following, regardless of pain and danger, the highest path that lay within the range of my vision, regardless of pain to myself, regardless of that fear of the world which so often leads us to accept its canons, even in sight of a nobler righteousness.

Therefore I resolved to set him free; I believed this to be possible, although my sight was clear, my spirit calm.  But he who beholds only the aerial pathway of an ideal right may stumble and fall on the stones of the world.  It was only given me later to realise, through grief too terrible for words, that, given the world as the world is, there are wrongs that are irrevocable, lies that, once lied, no truth can ever wipe away.