for his heart rebuked him, when he saw the ashy despair that spread over
her face and eyes, "Be still, my precious," he went on. "All is well.
You have been dreaming, and are not yet quite awake. It is the morphia
you had last night! Don't look so frightened. It is only your husband.
No one else is near you."

With the tenderest smile he sought to reassure her, and would have
gently released himself from the agonized clasp of her arms about his
neck, that he might get her something. But she tightened her hold.

"Don't leave me, Paul," she cried. "I was dreaming, but I am wide awake
now, and know only too well what I have done."

"Dreams are nothing. The will is not in them," he said. But the thought
of his sweet wife even dreaming a thing to be repented of in such
dismay, tore his heart. For he was one of the many--not all of the
purest--who cherish an ideal of woman which, although indeed
poverty-stricken and crude, is to their minds of snowy favor, to their
judgment of loftiest excellence. I trust in God that many a woman,
despite the mud of doleful circumstance, yea, even the defilement that
comes first from within, has risen to a radiance of essential innocence
ineffably beyond that whose form stood white in Faber's imagination. For
I see and understand a little how God, giving righteousness, makes pure
of sin, and that verily--by no theological quibble of imputation, by no
play with words, by no shutting of the eyes, no oblivion, willful or
irresistible, but by very fact of cleansing, so that the consciousness
of the sinner becomes glistering as the raiment of the Lord on the mount
of His transfiguration. I do not expect the Pharisee who calls the
sinner evil names, and drags her up to judgment, to comprehend this;
but, woman, cry to thy Father in Heaven, for He can make thee white,