Rosamund did not look up, but he saw her frown, and he saw a movement of her lips; they trembled and then set together in a hard line.

“I know what he was, not from you but from others; from his mother, from your sister, and from Canon Wilton.  I’m going to tell you something Wilton said to me about you and him after you had separated from him.”

Father Robertson stopped, and fidgeted for a moment with the papers lying in disorder on his table.  He hated the task he had set himself to do.  All the tenderness in him revolted against it.  He knew what this woman whom he cared for very much had suffered; he divined what she was suffering now.  And he was going to add to her accumulated misery by striking a tremendous blow at the most sacred thing, her pride of woman.  Would she be his enemy after he had spoken?  It was possible.  Yet he must speak.

“He said to me—­’Leith has a great heart.  When will his wife understand its greatness?’”

There was a long silence.  Then, without changing her position or lifting her head, Rosamund said in a hard, level voice: 

“Canon Wilton was right about my husband.”

“He loved you.  That’s a great deal.  But he loved you in a very beautiful way.  And that’s much more.”

“Who told you—­about the way he loved me?”

“Your sister, Beatrice.”

“Beattie!  Yes, she knew—­she understood.”

She bent her head a little lower, then added: 

“Beattie is worth more than I am.”

“You are worth a great deal, but—­but I want to see you rise to the heights of your nature.  I want to see you accomplish the greatest task of all.”

“Yes?”

“Conquer the last citadel of your egoism. Ego dormio et cor meum vigilat—­Send the insistent I to sleep.  I said it to you long ago before I knew you.  I say it to you now when I do know you, when I know the deep waters you have passed through, and the darkness that has beset you.  Fetter your egoism.  Release your heart and your spirit in one great action.  Don’t let him go down forever because of you.  I believe your misery has been as nothing in comparison with his.  If he has fallen—­such a man—­why is it?”

“I know why,” she almost whispered.

“You can never mount up while you are driving a soul downwards.  Do you remember those words in the Bible:  ’Where thou goest I will go’?”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps they might be changed in respect of you and the man who loved you so much and in such a beautiful way.  You were linked; can the link ever be broken?  You have tried to break it, but have you succeeded?  And if not, wouldn’t it be true, drastically true, if you said—­Where thou goest I must go?  If he goes down because of you I think you’ll go down with him.”

Rosamund sat absolutely still.  When Father Robertson paused again there was not a sound in the little room.

“And one thing more,” he said, not looking towards her.  “There’s the child, your child and his.  Is it well with the child?”