consigned to the flames.

Feeling unable to go to the nursery with that letter unanswered, she sat
down at once and wrote to her cousin.

"I only read your letter, Aubrey, half an hour ago. I am answering it at
once, because I cannot enter the presence of my little son, with such a
letter as yours still in my possession. As soon as I have answered it I
shall burn it.

"I may then be able to rise above the terrible sense of shame which
completely overwhelmed me at first, at the thought that any man--above
all a man who knew me well--should dare to write me such a letter!

"At first my whole soul cried out in horror: 'What am I? What have I
been? What have I done--that such words should be written--such a
proposition made--to me?' The sin of it seemed to soil me; the burning
wickedness, to brand me. I seemed parted from my husband and my child,
and dragged down with you into your abyss of outer darkness.

"Then, into my despair, sacred words were whispered for my comfort. 'He
was in all points tempted, like as we are, _yet without sin_,' and,
through my shame and tears, I saw a vision of the Holy One, standing
serene and kingly on the pinnacle of the temple, where, though the devil
dared to whisper the fiendish suggestion: 'Cast Thyself down,' He stood
His ground without a tremor--tempted, yet unsoiled.

"So--with this vision of my Lord before me--I take my stand, Aubrey
Treherne, upon the very summit of the holy temple of wifehood and
motherhood, and I say to you: 'Get thee gone, Satan!' You may have bowed
my mind to the very dust in shame over your wicked words, but you cannot
cause my womanhood to descend one step from off its throne.

"This being so, poor Aubrey, I feel able to forgive you the other great
wrong, and to try to find words in which to prove to you the utter
vileness of the sin, and yet to show you also the way out of your abyss
of darkness and despair, into the clear shining of repentance,
confession, and forgiveness.

"As regards the happenings of the past, between you and me--you state
them wrongly. I did not love you, Aubrey, or I would never have sent you
away. I could have forgiven anything to an honest man, who had merely
failed and fallen.

"But you had lived a double life; you had deceived me all along the
line. I had loved the man I thought you were--the man you had led me to
believe you were. I did not love the man I found you out to be.

"I could not marry a man I did not love. Th