This love of his for Isabel, this love which came from outside, which had nothing to do with moral or æsthetic approval--it should be a thing altogether high and holy. To keep it clear of contamination, to sanctify it by restricting it to the loftiest regions of life--this was the task that lay before him. The task might be difficult. Isabel might try to increase the difficulty of it. But he would gather strength from the very difficulty of his position, the very intensity of his passion, which, by the sheer weight of it, must lay so great a responsibility upon him as his soul must needs rise to bear. For the heavier the weight, the easier it is to endure; the soul braces itself sternly, deliberately, to the labour, and carries off the burden of a crushing load more triumphantly than the straws which daily life and little desires impose--the straws which seem of no account, and for which, therefore, the soul makes no preparation, stiffens no muscles to sustain. Against a lapse Kingston felt himself defended as much by the solemn ecstasy with which he had come to accept the fact of his passion as by his sense of the redoubled duty which it made him owe to the other life that he had innocently involved.
Tragic affection possessed him as he thought of Gundred;--Gundred, giving her all--that all which now appeared so little; Gundred, whose greatest gift had now become inadequate, yet must never be slighted or discarded. In a moment he saw the vast distance that now separated him from his wife. Had they ever, in reality, been close together? Now, without conscious treachery on either hand, time had removed them very far away from each other. He understood what impulse it was that had lately been making him try to pull her back into his life, and realized how completely she had passed out of it. There was no fault in her--at least, no other fault than a limitation of nature. How he himself could have escaped the penalty of his own character he could not see. The crisis of remorse was passing. He had committed no deliberate sin against his wife. What had come about had come about through no volition of his. If he loved Isabel that love was something outside himself--something that he could not kill, though he might duly cage it and control it. To cage it and control it accordingly was all that remained for him to do. Infidelity, treachery, adultery of the flesh would be an unpardonable treason to his love and his loyalty; the adultery of the heart is a thing instinctive, inevitable, committed sooner or later by many blameless men and women. This, the most important of human treasons, stands for ever beyond the reach of human restraint. No judge can analyze it, no jury weigh it; it can be valued by no damages, absolved by no divorce. The marriage of heart with heart is a matter outside the reach of law; the world and its laws are only concerned with external and visible manifestations. Let the outward life be clean and seemly; but nothing can govern the impulses of the inner secret life. Its movements can only be prevented from reacting shamefully on daily demeanour; they can never be measured, foretold, forbidden. Kingston knew that his heart was faithless to his wife--knew that, in reality, it had never been pledged to her at all. Her heart to his, perhaps; but he had pledged her nothing, he found, but his approval, his affection, his respect. All the more reason, then, that, having bought so much of her, and for coin so innocently false, he should pay his debt to the uttermost farthing in the only money he had to pay. Respect, affection, approval, all that he had pledged and promised--these should be paid without grudge or chicane, and the very completeness and honesty of these tributes must atone as far as possible for the cruel fact that he had no more to give her. In the fullness of his tribute to Gundred he must find at once the redemption of his own self-respect, the safeguarding of her happiness, and the glorification of this love of his, that might sink so low, and might be made to rise so high.