“God pardon me,” she said after a moment’s pause, “for having drawn you to this! I did not mean it. If you knew all you would forgive me. It cannot, cannot be! Leave me.” He hesitated. “Leave me, leave me at once!” she cried.
He rose, she took his right hand in both of hers: there was one look straight into his eyes from her own which were filling with tears, a half sob, her hands after one more grasp fell, and he found that he had left the house. He went home. How strange it is to return to a familiar chamber after a great event has happened! On his desk lay a volume of Cicero’s letters. The fire had not been touched and was almost out: the door leading to the garden was open: the self of two hours before seemed to confront him. When the tumult in him began to subside he was struck by the groundlessness of his double assumption that Mrs. Fairfax was Mrs. Leighton and that she was free. He had made no inquiry. He had noticed the wedding-ring, and he had come to some conclusion about it which was supported by no evidence. Doubtless she could not be his: her husband was still alive. At last the hour for which unconsciously he had been waiting had struck, and his true self, he not having known hitherto what it was, had been declared. But it was all for nothing. It was as if some autumn-blooming plant had put forth on a sunny October morning the flower of the year, and had been instantaneously blasted and cut down to the root. The plant might revive next spring, but there could be no revival for him. There could be nothing now before him but that same dull duty, duty to the dull, duty without enthusiasm. He had no example for his consolation. The Bible is the record of heroic suffering: there is no story there of a martyrdom to monotony and life-weariness. He was a pious man, but loved prescription and form: he loved to think of himself as a member of the great Catholic Church and not as an isolated individual, and he found more relief in praying the prayers which millions had before him than in extempore effusion; humbly trusting that what he was seeking in consecrated petitions was all that he really needed. “In proportion as your prayers are peculiar,” he once told his congregation in a course of sermons on Dissent, “they are worthless.” There was nothing, though, in the prayer-book which met his case. He was in no danger from temptation, nor had he trespassed. He was not in want of his daily bread, and although he desired like all good men to see the Kingdom of God, the advent of that celestial kingdom which had for an instant been disclosed to him was for ever impossible.