like ashes, and souls stand bare, face to face. For the every-day,
cheery, unselfish Grey of the coarse life in yonder he cared but little;
it was but the husk that held the woman whose nature grappled with his
own, that some day would take it with her to the Devil or to God. He
knew that. It was this woman that stood before him now: looking back,
out of the inbred force and purity within her, the indignant man's sense
of honor that she had, on the lie they had made her live: daring to face
the truth, that God had suffered this thing, yet clinging, like a simple
child, to her old faith in Him. That childish faith, that worked itself
out in her common life, Paul Blecker set aside, in loving her. She was
ignorant: he knew the world, and, he thought, very plainly saw that the
Power who had charge of it suffered unneeded ills, was a traitor to the
Good his own common sense and kindly feeling could conceive; which is
the honest belief of most of the half-thinkers in America.

"You were but a child," he said again. "It matters nothing to me, Grey.
It left no taint upon you."

"It did," she cried, passionately. "I carry the marks of it to my grave.
I never shall be pure again."

"Why did your God let you go down into such foulness, then?"--the words
broke from his lips irrepressibly. "It was He who put you in the hands
of a selfish woman; it was He who gave you a weak will. It is He who
suffers marriages as false as yours. Why, child! you call it crime, the
vow that bound you for that year to a man you loathed; yet the world
celebrates such vows daily in every church in Christendom."

"I know that";--her voice had gone down into its quiet sob, like a
little child's.