She had not loved well.  And she saw now that men and women only counted by their power of loving.  She had despised and detested poor little Mrs. Hannay; yet it might be that Mrs. Hannay was nearer to God than she had been, by her share of that one godlike thing.

She, through her horror of one sin, had come to look upon flesh and blood, on the dear human heart, and the sacred, mysterious human body, as things repellent to her spirituality, fine only in their sacrifice to the hungry, solitary flame.  She had known nothing of their larger and diviner uses, their secret and profound subservience to the flame.  She had come near to knowing through her motherhood, and yet she had not known.

And as she looked with anguish on the helpless body, shamed, and humiliated, and destroyed by her, she realised that now she knew.

Edith’s words came back to her, “Love is a provision for the soul’s redemption of the body.  Or, may be, for the body’s redemption of the soul.”  She understood them now.  She saw that Edith had spoken to her of the miracle of miracles.  She saw that the path of all spirits going upward is by acceptance of that miracle.  She, who had sinned the spiritual sin, could find salvation only by that way.

It was there that she had been led, all the while, if she had but known it.  But she had turned aside, and had been sent back, over and over again, to find the way.  Now she had found it; and there could be no more turning back.

She saw it all.  She saw a purity greater than her own, a strong and tender virtue, walking in the ways of earth and cleansing them.  She saw love as a divine spirit, going down into the courses of the blood and into the chambers of the heart, moving mortal things to immortality.  She saw that there is no spirituality worthy of the name that has not been proven in the house of flesh.

She had failed in spirituality.  She had fixed the spiritual life away from earth, beyond the ramparts.  She saw that the spiritual life is here.

And more than this, she saw that in her husband’s nature hidden deep down under the perversities that bewildered and estranged her, there was a sense of these things, of the sanctity of their life.  She saw what they might have made of it together; what she had actually made of it, and of herself and him.  She thought of his patience, his chivalry and forbearance, and of his deep and tender love for her and for their child.

God had given him to her to love; and she had not loved him.  God had given her to him for his help and his protection; and she had not helped, she had not protected him.

God had dealt justly with her.  She had loved God; but God had rejected a love that was owing to her husband.  Looking back, she saw that she had been nearest to God in the days when she had been nearest to her husband.  The days of her separation had been the days of her separation from God.  And she had not seen it.