A little while she was silent; and seemed in debate with herself.  At length she said—­

“Dear Mrs. De Lisle!  To you I have unveiled my heart more than to any other human being.  And I am constrained to draw the veil a little farther aside.  To speak will give relief; and as you are wiser, help may come.  At Saratoga, I confided to you something on that most delicate of all subjects, my feelings towards my husband.  I have yet more to say!  Shall I go farther in these painful, almost forbidden revelations?”

“Say on,” was the answer, “I shall listen with no vain curiosity.”

“I am conscious,” Mrs. Dexter began, “of a new feeling towards my husband.  I call it new, for, if only the fuller development of an old impression, it has all the vividness of a new-born emotion.  Before my illness, I saw many things in him to which I could attach myself; and I was successful, in a great measure, in depressing what was repellant, and in magnifying the attractive.  But now I seem to have been gifted with a faculty of sight that enables me to look through the surface as if it were only transparent glass; and I see qualities, dispositions, affections, and tendencies, against which all my soul revolts.  I do not say that they are evil; but they are all of the earth earthy.  Nor do I claim to be purer and better than he is—­only so different, that I prefer death to union.  It is in vain to struggle against my feelings, and I have ceased to struggle.”

“You are still weak in body and mind,” answered Mrs. De Lisle.  “All the pulses of returning life are feeble.  Do not attempt this struggle now.”

“It must be now, or never,” was returned.  “The current is bearing me away.  A little while, and the most agonizing strife with wave and tempest will prove of no avail.”

“Look aloft, dear friend!  Look aloft!” said Mrs. De Lisle.  “Do not listen to the maddening dash of waters below, nor gaze at the shuddering bark; but upwards, upwards, through cloud-rifts, into heaven!”

“I have tried to look upwards—­I have looked upwards—­but the sight of heaven only makes earth more terrible by contrast.”

“Who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb?” asked Mrs. De Lisle, in a deep, earnest voice.  A pause, and then—­“They who have come up through great tribulation!  Think of this, dear friend.  Heaven may be beautiful in your eyes, but the way to heaven is by earthly paths.  You cannot get there, except by the way of duty; and your duty is not to turn away from, but to your husband, in the fulfillment of your marriage vows—­to the letter.  I say nothing of the spirit, but the letter of this law you must keep.  Mr. Dexter is not an evil-minded man.  He is a good citizen, and desires to be a good husband.  His life, to the world, is irreproachable.  The want of harmony in taste, feeling and character, is no reason for disseverance.  You cannot leave him, and be guiltless in the eyes of God or man.”