In finding love he had found conscience, and in finding conscience he was
on his way to another great discovery.

Looking to where Jo Portugais' house was set among the pines, Charley
remembered the day--he saw the scene in his mind's eye--when Rosalie
entered with the letter addressed "To the sick man at the house of Jo
Portugais, at Vadrome Mountain," and he saw again her clear, unsoiled
soul in the deep inquiring eyes.

"If you but knew"--he turned and looked down at the village below--
"if you but knew!" he said, as though to all the world. "I have the
sign from heaven--I know it now. To-day I wake to know what life means,
and I see--Rosalie! I know now--but how? In taking all she had to give.
What does she get in return? Nothing--nothing. Because I love her,
because the whole world is nothing beside her, nor life, nor twenty
lives, if I had them to give, I must say to her now: 'Rosalie, it was
love that brought you to my arms, it is love that says, Thus far and no
farther. Never again--never--never--never!' Yesterday I could have left
her--died or vanished, without real hurt to her. She would have mourned
and broken her heart and mended it again; and I should have been only a
memory--of mystery, of tenderness. Then, one day she would have married,
and no sting from my going would have remained. She would have had
happiness, and I neither shame nor despair. . . . To-day it is all
too late. We have drunk too deep-alas! too deep. She cannot marry
another man, for ghosts will not lie for asking, and what is mine may not
be another's. She cannot marry me, for what once was mine is mine still
by ring and by book, and I should always be haunted by a torturing
shadow. Kathleen has the right of way, not Rosalie. Ah, Rosalie,
I dare not wrong you further. Yet to marry you, even as things are,