Expiate the crime!  The realisation of the meaning of the words covers me with shame.  As if what I propose will be a sorry penance!  That is the danger of a man thinking, as I have always done, in metaphors.  It has given me my loose, indirect views of life, of myself, of those around me.  If I had advice to offer to a young man, I should say:  “Learn to think straight.”  Expiate, indeed!  I will go to her and make confession.  I will tell her that awful loneliness is crushing my soul.  I will kneel before her and beseech her of her great woman’s goodness to give me her love again, and to be my helpmeet and my companion who will be cherished with all that there is of loyalty in me to her life’s end.  She will pity me a little, for I have suffered, and I will pity her tenderly, in deep sincerity, and our life together will be based on that all-understanding which signifies all-forgiveness.  And it shall be a real life together.  I used to smile, in a superior way, at her dread of solitude.  Heaven forgive me.  I did not then know its terrors.  It comforted for the first few benumbed days, but now it is gathering around me like a mysterious and appalling force.  I crave the human presence in my home.  I need the woman’s presence in my heart.

We shall live together then as man and wife, in defiance of the world.  Let the moralists blame us.  We shall not care.  It will make little social difference to Judith, and as for myself, have I not already inflicted public outrage on society? does not my Aunt Jessica regard me as a wringer of the public conscience, and does not my Cousin Rosalie mention me with a shudder of horror in her tepid prayers?  If I really give them cause for reprobation they will be neither wiser, nor better, nor sorrier.  And if the baronetcy flickers out in unseemly odour, I for one shall know that the odour is sweeter than that wherein it was lighted, when my great-grandfather earned the radiance by services rendered at Brighton to His Royal Highness the Prince Regent.  This is the only way in which I can make Judith reparation, the only way in which I can find comfort.  We shall travel.  Italy, beloved of Judith, is calling me.  Probably Florence will be our settled home.  I shall give up this house of madness.  The clean sweet love of Judith will purify my heart of this poisonous passion, and in the end there will be peace.

I have taken Carlotta’s photograph from its frame and cast it into the fire, thus burning her for her witchcraft.  I watched the flames leap and curl.  The last look she gave me before they licked away her face had its infinite allurement, its devilish sorcery so intensified in the fierce yellow light, that the yearning for her clutched me by the throat and shook me through all my being.