She rose slowly from her seat on the bed and stared at him aghast.
The twilight in the room deepened; the shadow of a wall opposite the window fell darker. Their faces and Yvonne’s bare neck and arms gleamed white in the gloom. They had spoken with many silences; for how long neither knew.
“Yes,” replied the Canon in his harder tones, recovering himself “It means all that.”
“I am to go--not to live with you any more?”
“Could you imagine our past relations could continue?”
“I don’t understand,” she began feebly. And then the darkness fell upon her, and her limbs relaxed. She swayed sideways and would have fallen, but he caught her in his arms and laid her on the couch.
She hid her face in her hands and remained, crouched up, quite still, in a stupor of misery. The Canon stood over her helplessly, unable to find a word of comfort.
The sight of her prostration did not move him. He had been wounded to the very depths of his being. His pride, his honour, his dignity were lacerated in their vitals. He burned with the sense of unpardonable wrong.
“It is self-evident,” he said at last, “that we must part. Our remaining together would be a sin against God and an outrage upon Society.”
She rased herself wearily, with one hand on the couch, and shook her head slowly.
“Such things are beyond me. No one will ever know.”
“There is One who will always know, Yvonne.”
She pondered over the saying, as far as her tired, bewildered brain allowed. It conveyed very little meaning to her. Theology had not altered her child-like conception of the benevolence of the Creator. After a long time she was able to disentangle an idea from the confusion.
“If it is a sin--don’t you love me enough to sin a little for my sake?”
“I would commit any sin for your sake,” she said. “It would seem so easy.”
Curiously assorted as they were, a poetic idealism on the one side and grateful veneration on the other had hitherto bound them together. Now they were sundered leagues apart; mutual understanding was hopeless. Each was bewildered by the other’s moral attitude.
The logical consequences of the discovery, that appeared so luridly devious to the Canon’s intellect, failed entirely to appeal to Yvonne. She referred them entirely to his personal inclinations. On the other hand, the Canon had a false insight into her soul that was a chilling disillusion.